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The Upper Road Series: Book One 


THE CALL, OF 
THE UPPER ROAD 


KATHRINE R. LOGAN 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/callofupperroad00loga 





‘rom a Copley Print. Copyright by Curtis & Cameron. 
Publishers, Boston, Mass. 


THE BOY OF WINANDER, H. O. Walker 


All day where the sunlight played 

on the sea-shore, Life sat, 

All day the soft wind played with 

his hair, and the young, young face 
looked out across the water. He was 
waiting—he was waiting; but he could 
not tell for what. 


THE CALL OF 
THE UPPER ROAD 


Soa 7RY OF Pola 
fs a 
BY 


KATHRINE R. LOGAN\ » s, 


NEW Ge YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


THE CALL OF THE UPPER ROAD 
Bas, yy pile 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


This Series of Books 
Is Dedicated 


TO ALL SEEKERS OF THE BEST 













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4‘ Le | e «, 


INTRODUCTION 


The author of this book many years ago 
heard the Call of the Upper Road and entered 
upon it. Her experience as a teacher, as county 
superintendent of schools, as a worker in the 
United States Agricultural Extension Depart- 
ment, and as a national Y. W. C. A. secretary, 
fits her to be a counselor of others. 

In her book she portrays the Upper Road as 
the only one that gives satisfaction all the way 
through life. There are no desert wastes to be 
met in traveling it, nor are there mirages that 
promise refreshing waters and then vanish 
from sight when one feels the most exhaust- 
ing thirst. On the Road are many Elims with 
shady palm trees and wells of cool sweet waters 
by the way. 

In a long lifetime I have never known a pe- 
riod in which such wise counsel as is given in 
this book was more urgently needed than it is 


Vi 


Vill Introduction 


today. The message of the book is most help- 
ful and timely. It will be a guide and strength 
and inspiration to all who read it. 


Rev. Joon MAcAttister, D.D. 


Hollywood, California. 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


In these chapters occur many quotations 
which I hope will be as helpful to the reader as 
they have been to me. 

I am especially grateful to the following pub- 
lishers who have generously granted me the 
privilege of quoting from their books: 
ASSOCIATION PRESS: 

Realizing Religion by Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr. 

Christian Standards in Life by Murray-Harris 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY: 

A Heart Garden by J. R. Miller 

Optimistic Life by Orison Swett Marden 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY: 

This Mystical Life of Ours by Ralph Waldo Trine 


FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY: 
Spiritual Knowing by Theodore F. Seward 


FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY: 
The Book of Courage by W. J. Dawson 
The Larger Life by George D. Herron 
Christiansty and Progress by Harry Emerson Fosdick 


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY: 


What Christiamty Means to Me by Lyman Abbott 
The Infimte Artist and Other Sermons by Freder- 
ick F. Shannon 


ix 


x Acknowled gment 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY: 

Short passages from The Home Book of Verse 
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY, LTD.: 

Dawn by Frederick George Scott in “Canadian Poets 

and Poetry” 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS: 

Poem Outlines by Sidney Lanier 

The Towing of Felix by Henry Van Dyke 
MITCHELL KENNERLY CO.: 

Psalm by Jessie E. Sampter in “The Lyric Year” 


WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE: 

Good Company by Kar! Wilson Baker in “The An- 
thology of Magazine Verse and Year Book of 
American Poetry” 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: 

Souls by Fannie Stearns Davis in “Myself and I’ 

Every Great Deed Has a Stairway by Mary Caro- 
line Davies 

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT: 

Quctations from Dr. Lyman Abbott 


G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS: 


Each in His Own Tongue, and Other Poems by Wil- 
liam Herbert Carruth 


HARPER & BROTHERS: 
The Mirthful Lyre by Arthur Guiterman 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY: 


Verse by Fredrica Beard to “The Boy of Winan- 
der” from Pictures in Religious Education. 


NS) 


CONTENTS 


Roads and Choices 
The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 


The Call of the Upper Road Within 
the Soul . 


The Miracle of Will on the Upper 
Road 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 


Your Day and Your Opportunity on 
EREUINOGG yh) Sate ON tris Laie Pie 


119 


143 





CHAPTER 1: Roads and Chozces 


“Oft as we jog along life’s winding way, 
Occasion comes for every man to say— 
‘This road?—or That?’ and as he chooses 

then, , 
So shall his journey end in Night or Day.” 


—JOHN OXENHAM, “The Cross Roads” 


“All in the golden weather forth let us ride 
today, 
You and I together on the King’s Highway; 
The blue skies above us, and below the shin- 
ing sea, 
There’s many a road to travel, but it’s this 
road for me.” 


—JoHN S. McGroarty 


THE CALL OF THE 
UPPER ROAD 


CHAPTER 1 
Roads and Chovces 


Life is made up of roads: 

They start from where you are; 
Some roads are ending near, 
And some are leading far. 


The road you choose means much 
To others and to you: 
*Tis not so much the road 
As where ’tis leading to. 
—K. R. L. 


All roads start from where you are. They 
run in all directions and you may wonder which 
is the best road to take. All have a way of 
their own of inviting you, and each has its own 


particular inducements. 
15 


16 The Call of the Upper Road 


Roads seem to know you and to expect you. 
They keep open for you both day and night. 
There is a big difference in the roads and it is 
most important that you choose the best. 

At the beginning, roads may look so very 
much alike to you that you may not hesitate 
much in your choice. You will find, however, 
as you journey on that the difference in the end 
is tremendous. You will find too that the road 
you keep traveling gets a grip on you, so that 
the longer you travel it the less likely you are 
to make any change, the more susceptible you 
become to its lure, and the more yielding to its 
line of conduct. It influences your future line 
of thought, course of action, and quality of ser- 
vice. It is a road of progress in its own di- 
rection. It is the entrance to a certain des- 
tination ahead, and it has to do with your 
eternal destiny. 

Before you go any farther on your journey 
of life, inquire of your innermost soul as to 
the best road. “Happy are you if you condemn 
not yourself in the things which you allow.” 
If you are true to the voice speaking within 
your soul you need have no doubt regarding the 
road you ought to travel. Within yourself you 


Roads and Chovces 17 


will find the right promptings—it is not neces- 
sary for you to depend on anything outside. 

When you choose the best road the Great 
Spirit within you becomes your constant guide, 
by reproving you when you leave the right 
road, by having angels minister unto you when 
you overcome, by ever speaking within, to woo 
you, and by letting you know the very moment 
when you even think of wandering a bit. The 
Spirit within has a kind of way of making you 
feel a bit uncomfortable when you get off the 
right road, sometimes causing a feeling of re- 
morse—all in greatest kindness—just to 
awaken in you a sense of consciousness in order 
to lead you back again to the right road. Great 
indeed is the kindness of the Great Spirit 
within. It is back of all your inward struggles 
and keeps your soul alive. It is great as An- 
gelina Morgan says: 


“To be alive, 
To think, to yearn, to strive; 
To suffer torture when the goal is wrong, 
To be sent back and fashioned strong.” ~ 


No matter which road you choose to travel, 
the time given you will be rather short. It 


18 The Call of the Upper Road 


may be a day’s journey or it may be one ot 
many days. The length of time given you is 
not for you to know. All persons have the 
same allotment given them at any one time: a 
day at a time, a night at a time. We are each 
held responsible for the days and the nights 
that are given us. It is the quality of life 
and not the number of the days that is most 
important. 


“Our life is like a winter’s day: 
Some only breakfast and away; 
Others to dinner stay and are full fed; 
The oldest man but sups and goes to bed; 
Large in his debts who lingers out the day; 
He that goes soonest has the least to pay.” ? 


Whether you remain for breakfast only, or 
for dinner, or possibly for supper need not con- 
cern you. It is the road you choose and your 
conduct of life that matters. It is what you 
think and do that counts. 


“Greatly begin! Though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime.’’ ? 


* Quoted in different forms from epitaphs. 
? Lowell, “For an Autograph.” 


Roads and Choices 19 


Begin right and keep on doing the very best 
you know each day as it comes, and you will 
live a worthy life. You need not be concerned 
about the number of your days, but you should 
be concerned regarding the quality of your 
life. 


“Tt matters not how long we live, but how.” ® 
“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 
breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart throbs; 
He most lives who thinks most, feels the 
noblest, 
Acts the best; 
Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
Whose thick blood sleeps as it slips through 
their veins.” * 


You may have been traveling on the best 
road ever since you can remember. You may 
or may not be able to tell just when you 
started. You may have been raised in a Chris- 
tian home and surrounded by Christian influ- 


*P. J: Bailey. 
mie peealicy. 


20 The Call of the Upper Road 


ences. Before you were able to talk your 
mother may have whispered a prayer into your 
soul. As soon as you could lisp, you may have 
repeated the little prayer that she taught you. 
Your parents may not have been rich in this 
world’s goods. They may not have been edu- 
cated and accomplished, but if they lived conse- 
crated Christian lives and tried to start you out 
on the right road, that counted for more than 
all else. The right direction given the soul 
in youth is of inestimable value. 

Emerson put the right estimate on values in 
life when he said: 


“My Latin and my Greek, 
My accomplishments and my money stead me 
nothing ; 
Only as much soul as I have avails.” 


The biggest thing that our parents can do 
for us in infancy is to teach us about God as 
our heavenly Father; God who loves us and 
cares for us; God who always sees us and who 
hears us and knows even the very thoughts 
within us; God who will guide us all through 
life if we daily ask Him. Such teachings in 


Roads and Choices 21 


childhood lead to where we voluntarily make 
God our choice and with His help we travel the 
Upper Road through life. We may not under- 
stand all that our parents and teachers tell us, 
yet the soul is so very sensitive and impression- 
able that we receive and retain far more than 
any person can realize. 


“Think not that he is all too young to teach; 
His little heart will like a magnet reach 
And grasp the truth for which you find no 
speech.” 


The truths received in youth increase in 
meaning with the years. What goes into the 
first of life becomes part of ail life. The songs 
we sing, the verses we repeat, the ideals set 
before us, have far more to do with our inner 
life and our conduct than anyone can possibly 
know. 

In his youth a boy repeated glibly the words 
of a littke poem by Jane Taylor, “Twinkle, 
Twinkle, Little Star.” At sixty that boy re- 
peated again the same words, but he repeated 
them differently for they grew full of meaning 
and wonder with the years. Standing out 


22 The Call of the Upper Road 


under the starry heavens in the night he looked 
up and repeated the words aloud most slowly 
and most reverently: 


“Twinkle,—twinkle—little—star— 
How—I—wonder—what—you—are— 
Up—above—the—world—so—high— 
Like—a—diamond—in—the—sky.” 


He felt as did David of old when he beheld 
the heavens and said: 


“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, 

The moon and the stars which thou hast or- 
dained ; 

What is man that thou art mindful of him? 

And the son of man, that thou visitest him?” 


A young man who neglected to pray as he 
grew older was in the trenches during the late 
war and in great danger. As he lay there at 
night the prayer that his mother taught him 
in his childhood days came to him. He re- 
peated it. It meant everything to him as he 
lay in the darkness of the night in the face of 
danger, and he prayed most earnestly: 


Roads and Chovces 2 


“Now I lay me down to sleep, 

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep; 

If I should die before I wake, 

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take— 
And this I ask for Jesus’ sake—Amen.” 


Ah, it too had become full of meaning with 
the years. His whole soul went out to God, as 
he trusted and went to sleep for the night. 

Fortunate indeed are you if from your ear- 
liest childhood you learned to love the beautiful 
and the best; if you learned to look upon God 
as a Father who loves you; if from the very 
beginning you have been joyously conscious of 
His presence, and you felt hurt whenever you 
consciously did anything that in any way dis- 
pleased Him, and you could not rest until you 
talked things over with Him, and He forgave 
you and made you feel all right again. Happy 
indeed are you if through the years you have 
had this experience, for then you have been 
traveling the Upper Road all the way with Him. 

It may be that you have not had this experi- 
ence and you have not chosen to travel the 
Upper Road. Since each day is of such tre- 
mendous importance in your journey here it is 


oA, The Calli of theaUpree Rae 


vitally important that you choose to travel the 
Upper Road now. Life is short here and de- 
lays are dangerous, and there is much expected 
of you while you are here. If you carry out 
the plan God has for you it will be necessary 
for you to seek to know and to do His will. 
God leaves with you the choosing. You are a 
distinct individual and you make your own dis- 
tinct choices. No one else can do the choosing 
for you. Others may recommend, but you must 
choose. You are held responsible for whatever 
line of conduct you follow. Any delay in mak- 
ing choice of the best robs you of wonderful 
opportunities for growth and for service. 


“Come, choose your road and away, away, 
We'll follow the gypsy sun; 
For it’s soon to the end of day, 
And the day is well begun; 
And the road rolls on through the heart of the 
May, 
And there’s never a May but one.” 5 


Many things may influence you in the mak- 
ing of your choice. You may be inclined to 
follow the crowd. It is a temptation to go the 

* Alfred Noyes. 


Roads and Chotces 25 


way the many are going. Once you go along 
with the crowd you will find your progress im- 
peded. You begin to lose your power of initi- 
ative. The crowd blocks the way and carries 
you along with it. You find it difficult to get 
away from it. Beware of the crowd. Be 
strong enough to go alone, do your own think- 
ing and your own choosing. Travel the road 
of loftiest purpose, sincerest seeking, most un- 
selfish living, constant growing, choicest fel- 
lowships, and greatest soul satisfactions. 

You may be inclined to travel the road that 
your most intimate friend is traveling. The 
choice of your friend may not always be the 
best. Your friend may be your greatest hin- 
drance. You are with your friend so con- 
stantly. You help shape each other’s thoughts 
and direct each other’s conduct. There can be 
no true lasting friendship unless you travel the 
best road. Any person who continues to keep 
you from being and doing your best is no true 
friend. Friends should be mutually helpful. 
You too must be your best because of your 
friend. Elizabeth Barrett Browning once 
asked Charles Kingsley, “What is your secret 
of life? Tell me that I may make mine beauti- 


26 The Call of the Upper Road 


ful too.’ ’ He replied, “J: had®a friend)” One 
of the choicest gifts in life is a friend who 
helps you to be your best. An ancient philos- 
opher once said to a friend of his, “I am always 
strong when I am near you.” 

On the road of life there is great need for 
such helpful friendships. It is great to be a 
helpful friend, the kind of Upper Road friend 
that folks will be glad to meet because of your 
friendly interest, your radiating personality, 
and your unselfishness. Your presence will be 
welcome and exhilarating as the sunshine. A 
woman who held many important positions said 
the greatest compliment ever paid her was when 
her mother said to her one day, “It always 
seems like seeing the sunshine to see you.” 
If you choose to follow the Upper Road and 
follow your Master closely you will become 
that kind of a friend. 


“Do any hearts beat faster, 

Do any faces brighten 

To hear your footsteps on the stair, 
To meet you, greet you, anywhere? 
Are you so like the Master, 

Dark shadows to enlighten? 


Roads and Chotces 27 


Are any, happier today 

Through words that they have heard you say? 
Life were not worth the living, 

If no one were the better 

For having met you on the way, 

And known the sunshine of your stay.” 


If you travel the Upper Road that is the 
kind of person you will be, and your friends 
will say of you what one friend said of an- 
other, “It was easier to be good when she was 
with us.” 

The late Emperor of Japan wrote the follow- 
ing significant advice in regard to one’s choice 
of friends: 


“For he that wrongs a friend 
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about 
A silent court of justice in his breast, 
Himself the judge and jury and himself 
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned. 


The water placed in goblet, bowl or cup 
Changes its form to its receptacle; 

And so our plastic souls take various shapes 
And characters of good or ill, to fit 

‘The good or ill in the friends they choose. 


28 The Call of the Upper Road 


Therefore be ever careful in your choice of 
friends, 

And let your special love be given to those 

Whose strength of character may prove the 
whip 

That drives you ever to fair wisdom’s goal.”’ 


In this pleasure seeking age your immediate 
desires for worldly pleasures may influence 
you in your choice of roads. The pleasures and 
amusements of the day occupy much of the 
time and thought of people. As a result the 
better thoughts and aspirations of life are 
crowded out of their lives. They fail to grow 
and pass on of their best to others. They lose 
their sense of responsibility and are not seri- 
ously concerned as to the outcome of their 
manner of life. They content themselves by 
asking, ““What’s the harm?’’—a sure indication 
that they stand condemned in their innermost 
souls in that which they allow, and from which 
they do not have enough strength of will to de- 
sist. They travel along in a happy-go-lucky 
way over this self-indulgent road that keeps 
their thoughts dwarfed and their souls starved 
and lean, and their lives spiritually unfruitful. 


Roads and Chovces 29 


One needs to be well reinforced within to with- 
stand this luring, pleasure-loving road where 
minor thoughts crowd out the greater. 

In Arabian Nights is a fable of a Magnetic 
Island away out in the ocean. Towards it a 
ship is drifting. The ship is stout, well built, 
and wonderful in its making, but it is rudder- 
less, and the magnetism of the island draws 
it closer and closer till suddenly without sound 
of hammer or explosion the ship falls to pieces. 
The magnetism of the island drew out every 
rivet and every bolt and the wreckage of a 
great ship lay strewn upon the sea. “This is 
only a fable,’ says the Record of Christian 
Work, “but there is much truth init. The lure 
of the present age is the Magnetic Island.” 

The books you read may have much to do 
with your choosing of the road. Good books 
are wonderfully helpful and intimate friends. 
Through them others pass on their best 
thoughts. They meet us as equals and we feel 
no embarrassment as we think things out to- 
gether. It is soul speaking to soul and spirit 
helping spirit, and there is entire harmony. 
There comes greater revelation and strength 
and courage and inspiration as we commune 


30 The Call of the Upper Road 


together on the things that are highest, and 
best, and uplifting. An English publishing 
house used the following advertisement when 
sending out their books, all of which were of 
a very high order: “A MAN WHO BUYS A BOOK 
IS NOT ONLY BUYING A FEW OUNCES OF PAPER, 
STRING AND PRINTER’S INK! HE MAY BE BUY- 
ING A WHOLE NEW LIFE.” 

You may not think it necessary to choose any 
other road. You are satisfied with yourself 
as you are. You read the best literature, you 
repeat its sayings to yourself, you revel in its 
ideas. You inwardly congratulate yourself on 
your intelligence, and on your standing in soc1- 
ety. You are proud of yourself. You would 
not swear or steal or lie or gossip. You would 
not do some of the things that many who pro- 
fess to be better than you do. You congratu- 
late yourself on your liberality and that you are 
what you are. In plain words, you are self- 
righteous and “knowest not that thou art 
wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, 
and naked.” 

The Master of the Upper Road says, “I 
counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, 


Roads and Chotces Bul 


that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment 
that thou mayest be clothed.” 


“You live for yourself, you think for yourself, 
For yourself and none beside; 
Just as if Jesus had never lived, 
As 1f He had never died.” 


“We begin to be bad as soon as we plume 
ourselves on being good.”” Two men one time 
went up to the Temple to pray. One prayed 
loud and long and told the Lord about the fine 
life he led, and all the fine deeds he did, and 
then he thanked the Lord that he was not like 
other men. The other man, feeling how finite 
he was, how lacking in understanding, how un- 
worthy of all the blessings bestowed upon him, 
bowed in humility and smote his breast, say- 
ing “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”’ We 
read that the latter was justified by the Master 
of Life rather than the former. 


“Two men went to pray, or rather say 
One went to brag, and the other to pray.” 


Dr. Channing was one day driving with a 
friend on the shore of the ocean. His friend 


32 The Call of the Upper Road 


remarked: “Oh, Dr. Channing, how small we 
seem in view of all this!” Dr. Channing re- 
plied, “When I am in such a presence as this 
I do not think of myself at all.” So it will be 
when you are conscious of the presence of God. 
To see Him you must get out of yourself. A 
Japanese proverb says, ‘“The frog in the well 
never sees the ocean.’’ Neither does the per- 
son that is satisfied with his own little circle of 
ideas and thoughts and plans, ever see the 
Christ, or know the meaning of the Life Abun- 
dant. “Christian faith is like a grand cathe- 
dral with divinely painted windows. Standing 
without you can see no glory nor can possibly 
imagine any; standing within every ray of light 
reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendor.”’ 


“God, harden me against myself, 

This coward with pathetic voice, 

Who craves for ease and rest, and joys, 
Myself arch traitor to myself, 

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
My clog, whatever road I go.’ ® 


It is not for you to remain on this road if you 
choose aright. 
* Christina Rosetti. 


Roads and Chovces 32 


“Take one step out of yourself,’ say the 
Sufus, “and you will arrive at God.” 

You may be preventing yourself from travel- 
ing the Upper Road because you persist in in- 
dulging in some known sin—something in your 
life that keeps you away from God; something 
that keeps you from communion with Him, and 
robs you of inward peace and the real joy of 
life. Your sin may not look very big to you, 
but if it is anything that keeps you from com- 
munion with God it is tremendous, no matter 
how insignificant it may appear to your blinded 
ayes. Anything in your life that separates you 
trom God is destructive to your soul. It calls 
down on you the greatest condemnation. These 
little sins are most dangerous. Once indulged 
in they are apt to become habit. “Habit is a 
cable. You weave a thread of it each day until 
it becomes so strong you cannot break it.” The 
devil gets more people to follow him by means 
of little secret sins than he does by the big out- 
standing crimes. He doesn’t care how he does 
it so he keeps you from the Upper Road and 
God. 

You may not have given any thought to the 
choosing of the road. You may be going along 


34 The Call of the Upper Road 


without any decisive thinking. There are many 
who drift along in this stupid way. They have 
their food and their clothes, and a good ac- 
count in the bank, and easy times, and an easy 
conscience. They go along each day as though 
life did not matter. The problems of the day 
do not concern them. They live only for their 
own interests, and unknowingly kill thereby 
what is to their own interest. Isaac Watt de- 
scribes them well when he says: 


“A number of us creep 
Into the world to eat and sleep 
And know no reason why we're born, 
But only to consume the corn, 
Devour the cattle, flesh and fish, 
And leave behind an empty dish. 


And if our tombstone when we die 

Be not taught to flatter and to lie, 
There’s nothing better can be said 

Than ‘he’s e’t up all his bread 

Drunk up his drink and gone to bed.’ ” 


In the words of Carlyle we might say of 
them, “Soul extinct; stomach well alive.” Such 
persons have not been in harmony with God 


Roads and Choices 25 


and His plans. They have not taken Him and 
His passion for humanity into account. Their 
better selves they allowed to become paralyzed 
while they ate and slept. The community is no 
better for their living in it. They have nothing 
worth while to pass on to others when they are 
gone. They are all too common to every age 
and to every community. They are unmoved 
by the great purpose of life. They are like 
those who were asleep “while Rome burned.” 
Wordsworth must have had them in mind when 
he wrote: 


“For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
It moves us not. Great God, I’d rather be 
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on the pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less for- 
lorn.” 


In your choosing you would not voluntarily 
want to continue to travel on any of these in- 
different irresponsible roads. The only way 
to stay clear of them is to keep off of them 
entirely. Better for you to say now with 
Chang Chih Ho, a Chinaman who lived in 750 
A. D., who in his day was a seeker of the best: 


36 The Call of the Upper Road 


The lady moon is my lover, 

My friends are the oceans four, 
The heavens are roofed over me, 
The dawn is my golden door. 

I would liefer follow the condor 
Or the seagull soaring from ken 
Than to bury my god-head yonder 
In the dust of the whirl of men.” 


Better say with David, King of Israel, “A 
day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I 
would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of 
my God than to dwell in the tents of wicked- 
ness.” Better with the apostle, be willing to 
spend and be spent, that the cause of Christ 
may be glorified. Better say with Edna St. 
Vincent Millay: 


“My candle burns at both ends; 
It will not last the night; 
But ah my foes, and oh my friends, 
It gives a lovely light.” 


Better say what Clare Sheridan said in her 
diary of a visit to Russia, “I would rather live 
in discomfort in an atmosphere of gigantic 
effort than to live in luxury among the purpose- 


Roads and Chovtces 27 


Jess.” Better for you to choose the best at 
once and make the affirmation of the poet your 
own: 


“T’m going by the Upper Road, for that still 
holds the sun, 
I’m climbing through night’s pastures where 
the starry rivers run; 
If you should think to seek me in my old dark 
abode, 
You'll find this writing on the door, 
‘He’s on the Upper Road.’ ” 


ileal 
ss 


big hi “ant nh 
; pha thee 
' é a 4 


. 





CHAPTER 2: The Call of the Upper 
Road in Nature 


Bestir yourself, move on, and do! 
North and south and east and west 
There’s something calling you; 

You have your choice of all that’s best, 


Of all that’s calling you. 
—K. R. L. 


CHAPTER 2 


The Call of the Upper Road 


wn Nature 


“T saw the mountains stand 
Silent, wonderful and grand, 
Looking across the land 
When the golden light was falling 
On distant dome and spire; 

And I heard a low voice calling, 
‘Come up higher, come up higher,’ 
From the lowlands and the mire, 
From the mists of earth’s desire, 
From the vain pursuit of pelf, 
From the attitude of self: 

‘Come up higher, come up higher. 


9991 


Voices are everywhere calling in nature. 
There is ever all about you something that calls 
to your soul, and invites you, as the poet says, 
to 


*James S. Clark. 
4l 


42 The Call of the Upper Road 


“Come out of your cage 
Come out of your cage 
And take your soul on a pilgrimage.” 


It is the call of the Upper Road. The call of 
the Upper Road is the call of God. He speaks 
to us through all that He has created. There 
is no place where God’s voice may not be heard. 
There is none but may hear Him speak if they 
but listen, if they but seek Him. 


“Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the 
wind.” 


To all there comes through nature a sense 
of His presence. No soul escapes knowing 
that God is, even though it may not understand. 
There comes to it in the words of George Mac- 
Donald: 


“A voice in the wind I do not know; 

A meaning in the face of the high hills 
Whose utterance I cannot comprehend, 

A something is behind them: that is God.” 


bf 


“Through every blade of grass,” says Car- 
lyle, “‘the glory of the present God still beams.” 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 43 


Coleridge in his “Hymn Before Sunrise” in 
the vale of Chamouni, says, 


“God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome 
voice! 
Ye pine groves, with your soul-like sounds! 
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!” 


In the words of the Psalmist, ‘““The heavens 
declare the glory of God and the firmament 
showeth His handiwork. Day unto day ut- 
tereth speech and night unto night showeth 
knowledge. There is no speech nor language 
where their voice is not heard. Their line is 
gone out to all the earth, and their sound to the 
end of the world.” 

Blessed indeed are they who hear God in 
nature and become awakened to a personal con- 
sciousness of Him. 


“And through and over everything, 

A sense of glad awakening .. . 

I know not how such things can be! 

I breathed my soul back into me. 

Ah! up then from the ground I sprang, 
I hailed the earth with such acry... 


44 The Call of the Upper Road 


‘O God,’ I cried, ‘no dark disguise 
Can e’er hereafter hide from me 
Thy radiant identity.’ ” ” 


Nature has a wonderful meaning when we 
see God in it. Poets of all the ages testify to 
this. 

“What are ye, orbs?” the poet asks, and in 
his soul he finds an answer, “The words of 
God! The Scriptures of the skies!” 

Addison looking at the stars thinks of them: 


“Forever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine.” 


It is to the soul alone that nature speaks thus. 
We alone have that in us that sees beyond the 
present and the material. We are not confined 
to the little space that we occupy here. The 
soul knows no boundary. There is no limit to 
the soul’s height or depth or breadth. 


“The immortal spirit hath no bars 
To circumscribe its dwelling place; 
My soul hath pastured with the stars 
Upon the meadow lands of space. 
*Edna St. Vincent Millay. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 45 


My mind and ears at times have caught 
From realms beyond our mortal reach, 
The utterance of eternal thought 

Of which all nature is the speech. 


And high above the seas and lands 

On peaks just tipped with morning light, 
My dauntless spirit mutely stands 

With eagle wings outspread for flight.” ? 


Nature helps the soul in its flight, as did 
the Marshes of Glynn the soul of Sydney La- 
nier when he became conscious of God’s pres- 
ence in the marshes about him. His soul 
sought greater freedom and he said: 


“Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness 

of God; 

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh 
hen flies ; 

In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt 
the earth and the skies. 

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in 
the sod 

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness 
of God; 


* Frederick George Scott. 


46 The Call of the Upper Road 


Oh, like to the greatness of God 1s the great- 
ness within 

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes 
of Glynn.” 


It is to this life of freedom and of greatness 
that the voices in nature call us. The soul 
longs to extend itself and like the bird soar 
high and free. 

God has great things in store for the soul 
if we but seek Him and listen for His voice. 
He enables us to see beyond—a beyond without 
limit. He sends us in every place some whis- 
pers of His love. Through the marshes, 
through His glorious sunsets, through Huis 
starry heavens, through the trees and the flow- 
ers, He sends us messages which may be ours 
if we are in tune to receive them. 


Does the evening sun entrance you 
With its glory as it sets? 

Does it lift and strangely free you 
From all earthly cares and frets? 
Do the stars of heaven tell you 
That your spirit knows no bounds, 
When at eventide you view them 
As they make their nightly rounds? 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 47 


Do you note how close is heaven, 
Feel its nearness in the woods, 
Where the many lights and shadows 
Answer to your inner moods? 
When you scent the flowers’ fragrance 
In the early days of June, 
Do you feel that you and heaven 
Are in almost perfect tune? 
Do you see the promised rainbow 
In the tiniest drop of dew? 
Then know that Heaven is sending 
Wireless messages to you. 
—K. R. L., Heaven's Wireless. 


It were well then to keep ourselves in tune 
with Nature, that we may hear her voices, ‘“‘For 
the world was made in order and the atoms 
march in tune.” King David tells us how he 
received messages from the hills, where he 
heard God’s voice in his soul. “I will lift up 
mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh 
my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which 
made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy 
foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not 
slumber. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is 
thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall 


48 The Call of the Upper Road 


not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. 
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He 
shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall pre- 
serve thy going out and thy coming in from 
this time forth, and even forevermore.” 

Not to David alone did He send His mes- 
sages, but through all time He sends messages 
from the hills and the mountains to those who 
listen, to those who have ears to hear. 

Now as in the days of Moses when God 
talked to him on the mount will God speak to 
us. Deaf indeed is the person who receives no 
message of strength and assurance from the 
mountains of today. 


Heaven doesn’t seem far 
Where the mountains are; 
Their fleecy clouds play 
On their summits all day; 
And there comes as of yore 
From those gone before 
A message of strength 
Through the mountains. 
—K. R. L., A Voice in the Mountains. 


John Muir loved the mountains. For him 
they had great messages of peace and strength. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 49 


He became great from associating with them. 
They kept his soul in tune with God. He 
says: 


“Climb the mountains and get your tidings: 
Nature’s peace will flow into you 

As sunshine into trees. 

The winds will blow the freshness into you, 
And the storms their energy, 

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” 


It is not necessary to live near the mountains 
to receive strength and uplift. We may hear 
God speaking to us as we drive along the road, 
where the wild roses also bring us messages 
from God. 


God loves me, 
He sends me roses— 
Every day He sends me flowers; 
All along the country side 
He scatters roses by the hours, 
To express anew His love, 
To remind me He is near. 
In my daily pilgrimage, 
His roses bring me cheer. 
——K RL, Love's: Token. 


50 The Call of the Upper Road 


God is such a wonderful lover of souls that 
He is constantly sending us gifts and messages 
of love. Go out into your garden and there 
too you may receive messages from Him, and 
be conscious of His nearness, and of His care, 
and of His love. 


“A garden lies from all the world apart, 
And in soft twilights, when the day is fair, 
I turn to walk in it and find YOU there!” 


“T often think when working over my 
plants,’ said John Fiske, “of what Linnaeus 
once said of the unfolding of a blossom, ‘I saw 
‘God in His glory passing near me, and bowed 
my head in worship.’ ” 


“A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot: 
Rose plot, 
Fringed pool, 
Ferned grot, 
The veriest school 
Of peace; and yet the fool 
Contends that God is not. 
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? 
Nay, but I have a sign; 
‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.” * 


*Thomas Edward Brown. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 51 


A dear old lady lived in a single room up- 
stairs. She was unable to get out to witness 
the beauties of a garden, so she kept a potted 
plant in her window because she said it spoke 
to her that God was near. 

We find everywhere manifestations of the 
goodness of the Lord. It was David who ex- 
claimed, ‘““The earth is full of the goodness of 
the Lord.” . Eliza Calvert Hall tells us that 
“Parson Page used to say there were some 
things that showed the goodness of the Lord, 
and some things such as_ strawberries and 
grapes and apples and peaches that showed the 
exceeding goodness of the Lord.” 

If our eyes were truly open and our hearing 
acute, we would exclaim with every step we 
take, and every delicious bite we eat, and every 
beautiful thing we see, “Isn’t God wonderful!’ 
Charles Kingsley in his dying hour was heard 
to whisper, ‘““How beautiful God is.” 

William Herbert Carruth sees God in na- 
ture, in his beautiful poem, “‘Each in His Own 
Tongue”: 


“A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite tender sky, 


52 The Call of the Upper Road 


The ripe rich tints of the cornfields, 
And the wild geese sailing high, 
And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the goldenrod, 

Some of us call it Autumn 

And others call it God.” 


Everywhere it is God. All we need to do is 
seek Him. There is nothing difficult about it. 
The difficulty is within ourselves when we fail 
to seek and to believe and to accept. 


“So then believe that every bird that sings, 
And every blossom that stars the elastic sod, 
And every thought the happy summer brings 
To the pure spirit, is the word of God.” 


James Russell Lowell asks: 


“Have you seen God in the splendors, 
Heard the text that nature renders?” 


William Cullen Bryant answers: 


“From all around, earth and her waters, 
and the depths of air, 
Comes a still small voice.” 


Alfred Tennyson answers: 


“T hear a voice speaking in the wind.” 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 53 
Robert Browning: ‘said: 
“T saw God everywhere.” 


He calls the air, ““The clear dear breath of God, 
that loveth us.” 

Samuel Coleridge as he gazed on the beauties 
of Mt. Blanc exclaimed, “Earth with its thou- 
sand voices praises God.” 

Another poet said, “God like the wind goes 
breathing a dream of Himself through all.” 

Wordsworth, speaking of God fin nature, 
writes: 


“A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air 
_ And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.” 


King David was directed to go out to listen 
to the sound of a going on the tops of the mul- 
berry trees before bestirring himself to battle. 
Good advice for us in our day to listen to the 
voices of nature as we go out to the battles of 
life, lest it be said of us: 


54 The Call of the Upper Road 


“The world is too much with us, late and soon, 
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers, 
Little we see in nature that is ours.” ® 


Nature becomes to us, if we look and seek, 
a constant reminder of God at work in the 
world, of God speaking everywhere, and every- 
where sending us some tokens of His love and 
of His presence. 


“This is my Father’s world, 
He shines in all that’s fair ; 
In the rustling grass [ hear Him pass, 
He speaks to me everywhere.” 


Countess Von Arnhim tells us in her own 
words: “On the hills this morning I was walk- 
ing in the sunshine. It seemed to me that I met 
God and He took me by the hand, and let me 
walk with Him, and He showed me how beau- 
tiful the world is, how beautiful the back- 
ground. He has given us the splendid spacious 
background on which to paint large charities 
and loves. And I looked across the hilltops, 
golden, utterly peaceful, and amazement filled 
me in the presence of that great calm, at the 


*° Wordsworth. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 55 


way I flutter through my days and at the noise 
I make.” 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning must have had 
somewhat the same experience when she said: 


“Oh the little birds sang east, and the little 
birds sang west, 
And I smiled to think God’s greatness flows 
around our incompleteness, 
Round our restlessness, His rest.” 


God interfuses Himself in all and through 
all. The sun millions of miles away from the 
earth extends itself to where we are. It be- 
comes part of each peach and each apple and 
each rose, giving them each separate flavor and 
color and a texture all their own; so the God 
of the Universe comes where we are and inter- 
fuses Himself in us, giving us life and faith 
and love, putting within each of us a bit of the 
kingdom of heaven. 


“There’s part o’ the sun in an apple, 
There’s part o’ the moon in a rose, 
There’s part o’ the flaming Pleiades 
In every leaf that grows. 

Out of the vast comes nearness, 


56 The Call of the Upper Road 


For the God whose love we sing, 
Sends a little of His heaven 
To every living thing.” ° 


We must seek God to find Him. We must 
open our hearts to receive Him. He does not 
force Himself upon us. Should we refuse to 
listen, or to seek, ours is the eternal loss. Life 
and all there is in it loses its true meaning if 
we do not see beyond things. We become like 
Wordsworth’s Peter Bell: 


“A primrose by the river’s brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him 
And it was nothing more.” 


Elizabeth Barrett Browning gives a striking 
contrast between those who seek and find, and 
those who do not, when she says: 


“Earth’s crammed with heaven 

And every common bush afire with God; 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes— 
The rest sit round and pick blackberries.” 


The “rest”? fail to see God. They hear not 
His voice. They miss the great delights, the 


* Augustus Bomberger. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 57 


feasts of soul, the raptures of living, the joy 
of spirit, the wonderful communion, the part- 
nership with the Eternal, the reverence and 
appreciation of all life and all beauty and all 
truth and all love that belong to those who see 
God in everything. 

“Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, 
were it in the meanest province thereof, is in 
very deed the star-domed City of God; that 
through every star, through every grass blade, 
and most through every living soul, the glory 
of the present God still beams. But Nature, 
which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals 
to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.” 

A critic one time gazed on Turner’s paint- 
ing and said, “I never could see such colors in 
the sky as you paint.” Turner replied, “Don’t 
you wish you could? I never can begin to paint 
what I see!” To those who see: 


“There seems a voice in every gale, 

A tongue in every flower, 

That tells, O Lord, the wondrous tale 
Of thine almighty power.” 


God has a way of His own of revealing 
Himself to those who seek Him. He knows 


58 The Call of the Upper Road 


our differences and our personal needs and 
meets them all in the best way suited to each 
of us. He gives to each seeker the revelation 
of Himself that the seeker needs. He does it 
in His own way. 

Sydney Lanier one time became confused 
while listening to men’s unreasonable interpre- 
tations about God. It was only when God in 
His own wonderful and easy way revealed 
Himself to Sydney Lanier that his soul found 
relief. In writing his experience he says, “I 
fled in tears from men’s ungodly quarrel about 
God. I fled in tears to the woods, and laid me 
down on the earth; then somewhat like the 
beating of my heart came up to me out of the 
ground, and I looked, and my cheek lay close 
by a violet, and | said: 


““T know that thou art the voice of my God, 

dear violet; 

And oh, the ladder is not long that to my 
heaven leads; 

Measure what space a violet stands above the 
ground— 

Tis no farther climbing that my soul and an- 
gels have to do than that.’ ” 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 59 


Just like God to reveal Himself in such a 
simple and wonderful and beautiful way. That 
is always His way of doings things when we 
go seeking Him. He becomes so precious and 
so wonderful when we find Him and learn to 
understand Him better. 

He makes us conscious of His presence and 
love and nearness by means of the flowers at 
our feet, as well as He makes us conscious of 
His majesty and power and greatness by means 
of the stars in the heavens. “Daisies are the 
stars of the grass as the stars are the daisies 
of heaven, and if a man look long at the stars 
set out in such orderly array he may become 
fearful and think God far off, but if he be 
near he may pick a daisy and take his fill of 
comfortable things, for God will seem near 
and His voice in the daisy.” 

Frederick Langbridge gives the experience 
of a soul seeking God afar and finding Him 
feat: 


“T sought for God through star-dumb space; 
Beneath the sea I made a stair, 

And laid the primal forges bare; 

I questioned runn and rann 


60 The Call of the Upper Road 


And bones as old as man; 

There was no sign nor beck nor trace 
To lull the ache of my despair; 

My lattice roses touched my face 

And God was there.” 


“He is not far from any of us.” He is here 
in the very midst of things that He has created 
and is creating daily, giving them life and fra- 
grance and beauty. He wants this beauty to 
enter our souls and to become part of us. As 
we open the doors and the windows to let in 
the fresh air and the sunlight, so we may open 
the doors of our secret soul to take in beauty 
and love and life. Whittier had this idea in 
mind when he said: 


“But beauty seen is never lost, 
God’s colors all are fast; 
The glory of this sunset heaven 
Into my soul has passed.” 


In this way all that is beautiful becomes im- 
mortal, It is ours when we begin to travel 
the Upper Road of the Soul, and take posses- 
sion of our Inheritance. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 61 


“As the soul liveth, it shall live 
Beyond the years of time.” * 


God expects you to open your mind and soul 
to see and to receive the beautiful. What you 
see becomes part of you. Karle Wilson Baker 
in “New Voices” says: 


“Today I have grown taller from walking with 
the trees, 
The seven-sister poplars, who go softly in a 
line ; 
And I think my heart is whiter from its par- 
ley with a star 
That trembled out at nightfall and hung above 
the pine. 
The call note of a redbird from the cedars in 
the dusk 
Woke his happy note within me to an answer 
free and fine, 
And a sudden angel beckoned from a column 
of blue smoke— 
Lord, who am I that they should stoop: these 
holy folk of Thine?” 


Our soul’s inheritance is enriched when we 
go out as did William Cullen Bryant: 
* Whittier. 


62 The Call of the Upper Road 


“x * * under the open’ sky 
And list to Nature’s teaching.” 


When we remain too much indoors our souls 
feel cramped. We miss the tonic of the trees 
and the grass and the sky. We feel like saying 
with Richard Hovey: 


“T am sick of four walls and a ceiling, 
I have need of the sky, 
I have business with the grass.” 


The Upper Road calls you to behold the 
beautiful in Nature, to drink the ozone of the 
out of doors, to expand your soul as well as 
your lungs, to recognize God in everything 
beautiful that you see, to become conscious that 
He is with you, and that your soul may be 
made beautiful and strong and calm through 
all that He has created. Join Henry Van Dyke 
in his prayer to the “God of the Open Air,” 
that Nature may teach you her greatest les- 
sons of faith and calm and strength and cour- 
age, that you may be strengthened and en- 
riched on your Upper Road journey by all 
that Nature teaches. 


The Call of the Upper Road in Nature 63 


“By the faith that the wild flowers show when 
they bloom unbidden, 
By the calm of a river’s flow to a goal that is 
hidden, 
By the strength of the tree that clings to its 
deep foundation, 
By the courage of birds’ light wings on the 
long migration. 
(Wonderful Spirit of trust that abides in 
Nature’s breast!) 
Teach me how to confide, and live my life, 
and rest!” 





Bite) Nise rit il tah Mie PS Ys ad ia Bae he i 





The Call of the Upper 
Road Within the Soul 


“Blazing systems of sun and star 
Are not as great as my people are.” 


CHAPTER 3 


The Call of the Upper Road 
Wethen the Soul 


Nature is truly wonderful, but what would 
nature mean if there were no eyes to see, and 
no ears to hear, and no soul to appreciate and 
love! Nature can not take our place with God, 
and nothing can take the place of God within 
us. We are for each other to appreciate and 
love and enjoy. There is that within us that 
responds to God. There would be no meaning 
to life anywhere if we did not possess the won- 
derful soul that God has given us. There is no 
power but of God. There is no beauty but of 
God. There is no love but of God. There is 
no life but of God. The only thing in our lives 
that is significant is God in us. We may ad- 
mire nature and have her soothe and rest us, 
but the eternally important thing is to find 
God and to have His peace and joy and love 


and fellowship within our own souls. It is well 
67 


68 The Call of the Upper Road 


to see God in nature, but it is absolutely essen- 
tial for our salvation that we find Him within 
ourselves. This is the greatest discovery in 
life. Wordsworth found this to be true when 
he said: 


“Tn youth I looked to those very skies 
And probing their immensities 
I found God there, His Visible Power ; 
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
Of the power, an equal evidence 
That His love there too, was the nobler 
dower. 


It were wisdom then to seek for God within 
our own souls and to listen for His voice speak- 
ing within. He can be found by the earnest 
seeker and patient listener at any time of day 
or night and in any place. God is easy to be 
found. Walt Whitman asks: 


“Why should I wish to see God better than this 
day? 
I see something of God every hour of the 
twenty-four, and each moment then; 
In the faces of men and women I see God, and 
in my own face in the glass.” 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 69 


Paul says, “In Him we live and move and 
have our being.” “One God and Father of us 
all who is above all and through all and in you 
all.” 


“How far from here to heaven? Not very far, 
my friend; 
A simple hearty step will all thy journey end. 
Hold there, where runnest thou: Know heaven 
is in thee, 
Seekest thou for God elsewhere, His face 
thou It never see.” 


It 1s very fine to be able to go to the gardens 
and the waters and the mountains where nature 
is so calm and so beautiful and inspiring, where 
her many voices make it easy for us to think 
of God as we look and wonder and admire, but 
the great majority of us have to live such busy 
lives that we have little if any time to spend in 
meditation out in the open. We are busily 
engaged doing our part of the world’s work. 
It is a great joy to know that we may find God 
at our work, and that there we may be even 
closer to Him than out of doors simply 
admiring nature. 

In kitchens and offices, in factories and 


70 The Call of the Upper Road 


mines, in the crowded street, we see not the 
beauty of the out-of-doors. But wherever we 
are, and whatever our work, no matter how 
crowded or how shut in we may be, we may 
find God there, and hold sweet communion with 
Him, and be comforted by the great assurance 
that comes to us of His presence and of His 
approval of work well done. Henry Van 
Dyke expresses this truth in “The Toiling of 
Belix,’: 


‘“‘Nevermore thou needst seek me; 
I am with thee everywhere; 
Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; 
Cleave the wood and I am there.” 
x x x 
“This is the gospel of labor ; 
Ring it ye bells of the kirk! 
The Lord of love came down from above 
To dwell with the people who work.” 


Jane Taylor Wolfe has well said: “God of 
the Open Air is a splendid thought, but isn’t it 
a comfort to say, ‘And we walk together, my 
Lord and I,’ in the noisy cars, or among the 
streets and shops crowded with folks He has 
made ?”’ 


Call of Upper Road Wethin the Soul 71 


The very atmosphere of whatever place you 
are in becomes surcharged with life when you 
are conscious of the presence of God. It all 
depends on what your soul is seeking. Some 
one said to a business man in New York City, 
“Wall Street leads straight to Hell!” The 
business man replied, “It is true, and it leads 
just as straight to Heaven. It simply depends 
on which way one is going. I have found it 
as much a means of grace as some prayer meet- 
ings.” It is as easy to find Christ on Wall 
Street as it is to find Him on the mountain top. 
He is in the midst of the business of the world 
today. This is a day when there is much busi- 
ness to be attended to, and it 1s a great comfort 
to know that He is right with us and is using 
us in the carrying out of His plans for the 
world. George D. Herron, speaking of Christ 
in our midst, said: “Christ is toiling in the 
world today, revealing His glory and mani- 
festing His power inestimably more than when 
He traveled the Judean hills and dwelt in the 
Galilean city. He lives and reigns and speaks 
through the Holy Spirit, and is more imminent 
than the air we breathe. He is always coming 


72 The Call of the Upper Road 


in the events of our lives, in the crises of time, 
silently as the sun’s rays, secretly as the thief 
at night, coming in upon us unawares, inspir- 
ing our thoughts, speaking with our words, 
directing our deeds, thwarting our plans, and 
molding destinies to us unknown.” 


“Speak to Him then for He heareth 
And spirit with spirit can meet; 
Closer is He than breathing, 
Nearer than hands or feet.” 


“For ye are the Temple of the living God; 
as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and 
walk in them, and I will be their God, and they 
shall be my people . . . And I will be a Father 
unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daugh- 
ters, saith the Lord Almighty.” 

Jessie E. Sampter, addressing God in a 
psalm, said: 


“They have burned to Thee many tapers in 
many temples: 
I burn to Thee the taper of my heart. 
They have sought Thee at many altars, 
They have carried light to find Thee. 
I find Thee in the white fire of my heart. 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 73 


They have gone forth restlessly, forging 
many shapes, images where they seek 
Thee, idols of deed and thought. 

Thou art the fire of my deeds: Thou art the 
white flame of my dreams.” 


Phillips Brooks wrote to one of his most 
intimate friends: 

““All experience comes to me to be but more 
and more of pressure of God’s life in ours... 
I cannot tell how personal this grows to be. 
He is here. He knows me and I know Him. 
It is no figure of speech. It is the realest thing 
in the world, and one wonders with delight 
what it will grow to be as the years go on.” 

Tagore, in “Songs of Kabir,” says: 


“O servant, where dost thou seek Me? 
Lo, I am beside thee; 
I am neither in temple nor in mosque; 
I am neither in Kaaha nor in Kailish; 
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies. 
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once 
see Me; 
Thou shalt meet Me in a moment of time.” 


Kabir replies: ‘““O Sadhu! God is breath of 
all breath.” 


74. The Call of the Upper Road 


Tagore’s father, Maharshi Debendranath 
Tagore, one of India’s greatest spiritual 
leaders, once had a skeptical friend come to 
him and say: “You talk of God, ever and 
again of God! What proof is there that there 
is a God at all?” The Maharshi pointed to 
the light and asked his skeptic friend, “Do 
you know what that is?” “Light,” was the 
reply. The Maharshi then asked, “How do 
you know that there is a light there’ The 
skeptic answered: “I see it; it is there and it 
needs no proof; it is self-evident.” ‘So is the 
evidence of God,” replied the Maharshi. “I 
see Him within me and without me, in every- 
thing and through everything, and it needs no 
proof; it is self-evident.”’ 

Robert Browning testifies to the same truth 
when he says: 


“T know that He is there as I am here, 
By the same proof, which means no proof 
at all, 
It so exceeds familiar forms of proof.” 


"Tis we who doubt. ’Tis we who wander 
away from God, not God from us. We neg- 
lect the Spirit within us. We become pre- 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 75 


occupied with the things that gratify our 
senses. Lady Henry Somerset of England in 
her younger days allowed herself to be carried 
away with frivolous society until it occupied 
all of her thought and attention. After a time 
she became weary of thus frivoling away her 
thoughts, her time, and her energy. Her soul 
felt hungry and starved. She became dissatis- 
fied with herself. One day she went out into 
her beautiful garden to think things out alone. 

There is always hope for an individual who 
stops to do some serious thinking about life. 
One of the requirements of real life is that one 
must stop to think in order to advance. We 
should be able every day to give a satisfactory 
answer to our inner selves in regard to our 
conduct of life. Every day, with its new prob- 
lems and its new opportunities, we should stop 
to ask ourselves what is best for each particular 
day and why. Too few stop long enough to do 
real constructive thinking in these rushing but 
momentous days. We would get farther if we 
stopped to think and listen, if we stopped to 
pray and plan, if we stopped to grow and give. 
Samuel M. Crothers says, “The world is full 
of creatures that are doing things without ask- 


76 The Call of the Upper Road 


ing why. You can’t educate a grasshopper. 
He is too busy hopping. The peculiarity of 
man is, you can induce him to stop and think.” 

They say that we moderns travel faster than 
our ancestors, but where are we going? Some 
one else makes the statement that it matters not 
how fast we run if we are going in the wrong 
direction. According to a Russian proverb, 
“It is better to turn back than to lose one’s 
way.’ Without God we get nowhere. 

The day that Lady Henry Somerset went 
out into her garden and sat under an elm tree 
to think was a memorable day in her life. She 
had gotten farther than she had in many years. 
She listened to the voice within her own soul 
on that day, and her soul heard some very plain 
talking. She became very much ashamed of 
her conduct, dissatisfied with the wasteful life 
she had been living, disappointed with herself 
for having yielded to the doing of things that 
did not help herself or others, acknowledged 
her weakness in giving way to momentary 
pleasures, and losing sight of the great plan 
and purpose of life, and failing to help out in 
the great work that needed to be done. 

The old life had such a hold on her that she 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 77 


wondered if she could get away from the kind 
of life she had been living—if she could change 
the road she was on for a better one. She had 
traveled the old road so long, and was linked 
up in it in so many ways that the change would 
be very difficult. Her friends were on that 
road, and what would they think? Her manner 
of life conformed to the rules of action of that 
road. She really wanted to change, but how 
could she? These were the thoughts that ran 
through her mind. She sought God, but as she 
sought she doubted, but while she doubted she 
still sought the God of the Upper Road, and 
she did not have long to seek. No sooner had 
she repented of her old ways of living, and felt 
her utter need of Him and wanted to find Him 
more than anything else in the world, than she 
heard a voice say most earnestly, most sweetly 
and most assuringly: 

“ACT AS IF I WERE AND THOU SHALT KNOW 
THAT I AM.” 

Out under the blue sky, in the stillness of 
the garden, in the atmosphere of His roses, her 
soul stirred by the Spirit of God as the leaves 
of the tree under which she sat were stirred by 
the gentle breeze, she entered quietly, peace- 


78 The Call of the Upper Road 


fully, she knew not how, onto the Upper Road, 
into a newness of life, a life of loftiest purpose 
and divine fellowship. She surrendered her- 
self to the God of her soul, to Jesus Christ her 
Redeemer, and to the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. 
“ * * * a soul Sublime 
And the great pregnant hour of time 
With God Himself to bind the twain.” 


She went from her garden to her room where 
she would not be interrupted. There she sat 
down and read the whole Gospel of St. John, 
that wonderful little Gospel that tells all one 
needs to know about the Way of Life. She 
went to sleep that night happy in the new ex- 
perience that came to her that day. The next 
morning she awoke to find a world that seemed 
all new to her because of her great vision of 
life, and her own determination, with God’s 
help, to go forth to make life better for herself 
and others. 

She related her experience and her decisions 
to her friends. With the confession came new 
strength. She began right away to study the 


Call of Upper Road Wethin the Soul 79 


wonderful Little Book that God has given us 
and through which He speaks to us by the 
Holy Spirit. She held Bible readings with the 
tenants on her estate, and also with the colliers 
in the mines. As she studied and moved among 
her people they became more precious and more 
wonderful to her. She forgot their poverty 
and felt that many of them were far richer 
than herself in the things that really count in 
life. Through them she learned to look dif- 
ferently on all people everywhere. She had a 
great desire to help as many as she could to 
know the blessings of the Upper Road. The 
story of her life is one of marvelous achieve- 
ments. She and Frances Willard became inter- 
national figures in the cause of temperance. 
She had helped many who had lost their way to 
find God as she had found Him. To herself 
came greater joy as she witnessed the trans- 
formation of the lives of men and women that 
came with the changing of the road, and the 
reading of THE BOOK. 

These Upper Road experiences never come 
to travelers on other roads. Poor starved 
souls, they know not what they miss, yet they 
could have by just seeking and asking. 


80 The Call of the Upper Road 


‘God is not dumb that He should speak no 

more; 

lf thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 

And findest not Sinai, ‘tis thy soul is poor. 

There towers the mountain of the Voice no 
less 

Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who 
bends 

Intent on manna still, and mortal ends, 

Sees it not, neither hears its thunder lore.” ? 


Lady Somerset sought and found her Sinai. 
She lived in newness of life. She never could 
have accomplished what she did had she not 
listened to the Voice. No other road could 
have done for her what the Upper Road has 
done. It brought out the best there was in her. 
It led her to pass her best on to others. It 
changed her course in life from one of “‘fash- 
ionable society to one of consecrated philan- 
thropy.” 

Horace Bushnell in his youth was carried 
away by the lures of other roads, and he lis- 
tened not for God’s voice. He had even gone 
so far as to say that he did not believe there 


* Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 


Call of Upper Road Wrthin the Soul 81 


was a God. The road he was then on filled his 
mind with doubts about God. One day an 
earnest young minister pleaded with him to 
change his way and seek God. He asked him 
to pray, but Horace Bushnell refused and said 
he couldn’t pray because he didn’t believe in 
God. The young minister then asked him if, 
after he went to his room where he could be 
alone, he would begin by saying, “Oh God, if 
there is a God . . .” Horace Bushnell agreed 
to this. Several days later the young minister 
had the great joy of hearing Horace Bushnell 
testify before a large congregation his belief 
in the presence and the power of God. He left 
the old road he had been traveling to become a 
great preacher of the Upper Road. 


“Who goes a step toward God with doubtings 
dim, 
In glorious light God comes a mile toward 


3? 


him. 


Finding God does not depend on belief or on 
feeling, but on accepting. 

D. L. Moody tells of a conversation he had 
with a man in England. “Are you a Chris- 
tian?’ Mr. Moody asked the man, and he 


82 The Call of the Upper Road 


replied, ‘“No, but I wish I were.” Mr. Moody 
quoted verses from the Bible and when he was 
through the young man said they did not fit 
his case.” ‘“‘The fact is, I cannot feel that I 
am saved.” Mr. Moody replied, “Was it 
Noah’s feelings that saved him, or the ark?” 
The man replied, “Good night, Mr. Moody, it’s 
all settled.””. The young man accepted. 

Mary Roberts Rinehart says: 

“T am not disturbed when, as happens to 
most young men, there comes a time when out 
of the confusion of creeds, opinions and dog- 
mas, there emerges the temporary self-suff- 
ciency of youth. I am not as much disturbed 
as I might be even when doubts creep in, and 
religion, so-called, goes temporarily out of the 
window. 

“T have never known a worth-while man who 
has not had these doubts and these spiritual 
lapses. But I am not disturbed because I know 
this: sooner or later every man needs God. 
The stronger and more male the man, the surer 
he is to need Him, and to need Him is to find 
Wa bbaate = 


? Assn. Men, June, 1923. 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 83 
And when found to be able to say: 


“Thou art the life within me, 
O Jesus, king of kings; 
Thou art Thyself the answer 
To all my questionings.”’ 


The ear may hear many things, but it will 
never be satisfied until it hears God’s voice. 
The eye may see many things, but it will not be 
satisfied with anything less than the soul vision 
of Him. The heart is filled with longings and 
will not rest until He enters. Life is hollow 
until we find God and accept Him. 

The dissatisfactions of life are all for a pur- 
pose. The longing and yearning for some- 
thing better and higher is a sure indication that 
there is a God that can satisfy. ‘Our souls are 
restless till they rest in Thee.” Edwin H. 
Chapin said, “If you could take the human 
heart and listen to it, it would be like listening 
to a seashell; you would hear in it the hollow 
murmur of the infinite ocean to which it be- 
longs, from which it draws its profoundest 
inspiration and for which it yearns.” 

Mary Carolyn Davies writes: 


84 The Call of the Upper Road 


“When the sun shines in the street 
There are very many feet 
Seeking God, still unaware 
That their seeking is a prayer. 
Perhaps those feet would think it odd 
(Who think they are on business bent) 
If some one went 
And told them, ‘You are seeking God.’ ”’ 


St. Augustine said, “I desire to know God 
and the soul! Nothing else! Nothing else!’ 
Robert Browning asks: 


“What is it that I hunger for but God? 
My God, my God, let me for once look on Thee 
As though naught else existed, we alone.” 


Maxwell Struthers Burt says: 


“Straying we have a little lost our way, 
Nor see as yet the darkness folding in; 
Aye—for in the end, sore and torn and 
bruised we, 
Like long-lost children, will return to Thee; 
Like coast-born children, weary for the sea.” 


No mere statement about God, no mere belief 
as to what we think about Him can satisfy the 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 85 


soul. We must know God. We must find Him 
for ourselves. We must accept Him. He must 
become the most real, the most necessary, the 
most conscious Presence in our lives. 


“Though Christ in Joseph’s town 
A thousand times be born, 
Till He is born in thee 


Thy soul is most forlorn.” 


God is the only answer to our soul’s longing. 
“God does not put in the wild geese the instinct 
to go South without a South to go to. He did 
not inspire Columbus to sail without a San 
Salvador on hand to land.” 

When God made sound. He gave us the ear. 
When He made things beautiful He gave us 
the eye. When He made knowledge He gave 
us the mind. When He gave us immortal souls 
He gave us Himself. He tells us that our body 
is the temple of His Holy Spirit. “Know ye 
not that your body is the temple of God?” In- 
side this wonderful temple we may hold sweet 
communion with Him. We may worship and 
adore Him. No one but Himself sees inside 
this wonderful temple of ours. No outsider 


86 The Call of the Upper Road 


knows what sacred rites are taking place inside. 
No one can come as near us, or understand us 
as well, or love us as much as God. No one 
else knows the real longings and the struggles 
and the transformations going on within. 
Some day we shall emerge from our temple and 
“know as we are known.” 


“Tn the dawning of the morning of that bright 
and happy day, 
We shall know each other better when the 
mists have rolled away.” 


This soul of ours that is so much misunder- 
stood here shall some day come to its own, and 
the beautiful anner colorings and tints and 
shades and exquisite designs shall be in keeping 
with itself, a thing of perfection, for “‘we shall 
be like Him for we shall see Him as He is;” 
and “everyone who hath this hope in him purifi- 
eth himself even as He is pure.” The most 
wonderful, the most important, the most intri- 
cate, the most impressionable, the most power- 
ful, the only everlasting thing about us is our 
soul. Fannie Stearns Davis, writing on 
~Souls/ said - 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 87 


“My soul goes clad in gorgeous things, 
Scarlet and gold and blue, 
And at her shoulder sudden wings 
Like long flames flicker through. 


““And she is swallow fleet and free 
From mortal bonds and bars, 
She laughs, because Eternity 
Blossoms for her with stars! 


“O folk who scorn my stiff, gray gown, 
My dull and foolish face, 
Can you not see my Soul flash down, 
A singing flame through space? 


“And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate, 
Why may I not divine 
Your Souls, that must be passionate, 
Shining and swift, as mine?” 


It is to this life of wondrous inner beauty 
and harmony and peace that the Upper Road 
calls you. Various are the ways in which you 
may hear God speaking within your soul. 
Various are the ways by which you may find 
Him. To some He comes in one way and to 
some in another, but He never fails to speak. 


88 The Call of the Upper Road 


He never fails to come, and none need ever fail 
to find Him. 


“God speaks to hearts of men in many ways: 

Some the red banner of the rising sun 

Spread o’er the snowclad hills has taught His 
praise, 

Some the sweet silence when the day is done; 

Some after loveless lives at length have won 

His word in children’s hearts and children’s 
Paze. 

And some have found Him where low rafters 
ring 

To greet the hand that helps, the heart that 
cheers; 

And some in prayer, and some in perfecting 

Of watchful toil through unrewarding years; 

And some not less are His, who vainly sought 

His voice, and with His silence have been 
taught— 

Who bear His chain who bade them to be 
bound 

And at the end ‘n finding not, have found.” ? 


The main thing in life is to have found Him, 
to have accepted the Call of the Upper Road. 
* Frederick F. Shannon. 


Call of Upper Road Within the Soul 89 


Every day if you listen you may become con- 
scious of the Call of the Upper Road within 
your own soul. God enters daily into your 
private life. The very air you breathe He 
gives you; the breath of life within you is a 
eift from Him. The longings within your soul 
is His Holy Spirit stirring you that you may 
accept Him, and thus find peace and satisfac- 
tion. You can satisfy your soul only by listen- 
ing to the Call of the Upper Road, and accepting 
God and communing with Him, and entering 
into partnership with Him, and living a life 
acceptable unto Him. Then at the end of the 
Road of Life here you will enter into a larger 
life when the soul comes to its own—a life of 
blessedness and satisfaction and perfection and 
joy unspeakable through all eternity. 





CHAPTER 4: The Moracle of Will on 
the Upper Road 


“This main miracle that I am I 
With power on mine own act and on the 
world.” 


“To know the will of God is the greatest 
knowledge; 
To suffer the will of God is the greatest 
heroism ; 
To do the will of God is the greatest achieve- 
ment,” 
—Dr. LyMAN ABBOTT. 


CHAPTER 4 


The Meracle of Wall on the Upper Road 


_ “To every one there openeth 
A way and ways and a way, 
And the high soul climbs the high way, 
And the low soul gropes the low; 
And in between on the misty flats 
The rest drift to and fro; 
But to every man there openeth 
A high way and a low, 
And every man decideth 
The way his soul shall go.”’ 
—JoHN OXENHAM. 


No road is forced upon you. You travel 
whatever road you are on because you willed 
sotodo. Your willis yourself in action. Your 
will is your soul exercising self direction. 
Your will, your own free will, makes you re- 
sponsible for whatever you choose and holds 


you accountable all through life for that which 
93 


94 The Call of the Upper Road 


you choose to do. Your will is a wonderful 
divine gift. You will yourself to be whatever 
you are. By exercising your will aright you 
can accomplish great things, overcome great 
difficulties within and without. “All that life 
needs for life,’ says Tennyson, “is possible to 
will.’ If you exercise your will aright, you 
need never feel sorry for yourself, nor consider 
yourself a creature of circumstances, or of 
heredity, or of environment. Your will can 
carry you beyond any difficulties you may en- 
counter on the way. Your will enables you to 
master disadvantages and make them serve as 
ladders by which you can rise to loftier heights, 
and to the experience of greater joys, and to 
the accomplishment of greater service. “You 
must know, my daughter,” says St. Theresa, 
“that there is no supernatural act but depends 
on our will; and that therefore we can do it, 
with that ordinary assistance of God which we 
need for all our acts and even for our good 
thoughts.” 

The attitude of your will is the controlling 
factor in your life. It is not the place, nor the 
circumstances, nor the environment, nor the 
family into which you were born that decides 


Sa ee ee | 


The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 95 


your career, but it is you and your will. Noth- 
ing can harm or weaken the will but the will 
itself. If you cultivate your will power aright, 
your life will be a success. 


“This main miracle that I am I 
With power on mine own act and on the 
world.” 


In the same family, members think differ- 
ently, choose differently all through life, al- 
though they have had the same parents, the 
same environments and the same advantages, 
and the same religious training. Each chooses 
for himself the way his soul shall go. 


“So, from the heights of will 
Life’s parting stream descends; 
And, as a moment turns, its slender rill, 
Each widening torrent bends. 


From the same cradle side— 

From the same mother’s knee— 

One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
One to the peaceful sea.”’ * 


An English girl one day related an incident 
that led her to choose the best road. She said, 
* Oliver Wendell Holmes. 


96 The Call of the Upper Road 


“When I was a child I faced many difficulties 
that seemed insurmountable. I saw no way of 
bettering myself. I found myself ready to 
drift. I had a friend in the neighborhood who 
was always interested in young people. This 
friend knew I was discouraged and said to me, 
“You need not be discouraged. Exercise your 
will power and you will come out all right. 
You can become a power and do worth-while 
things if you really want to. It all depends on 
your will power.’ He then had me commit to 
memory the following lines from Ella Wheeler 
Wilcox. I have repeated them so many times 
I shall never forget them: 


“ “The human will, that force unseen, 
The offspring of a deathless soul, 
Can hew the way to any goal, 
Though walls of granite intervene.’ ” 


“Tn that case,” said my friend, “I really felt 
that walls of granite did intervene and that 
my case was most difficult. I willed, however, 
to do my best, to forge ahcrd, to study, to 
work, to pray, and daily choose the best. It 
was the turning point in my life. As soon as I 
deliberately chose the better way my thoughts 


re 


Lhe Meracle of Will on Upper Road 97 


and my life were changed daily as by a miracle. 
Healing and restorative forces began their 
work within me. I lived to hew through my 
walls of granite. I reached the goal I sought, 
and there found still better goals ahead to keep 
me ever striving.” This friend became a power 
for good and was instrumental in helping many 
others overcome their difficulties. 

There is nothing you cannot overcome if you 
really think you can, and keep persistently after 
the thing you desire. What Kant said is true, 
“All that ought to be done can be done.” 

Napoleon had strong will power. At one 
time he had his engineer report to him on the 
dangerous passes in the Alps. The engineer 
after examining them brought back the word, 
“Tt will be impossible to take the artillery 
across.” Napoleon replied, ‘““There shall be no 
Alps. Impossible is found only in the diction- 
ary of fools.” Across the Alps they went. 

Mirabeau had a like disrespect for the word 
“impossible,” for he said “‘Impossible is a 
blockhead of a word.” 

To him who wills to do God’s will and to 
carry out His plans nothing is impossible. 
With God nothing is impossible. There is no 


98 The Call of the Upper Road 


power but of God and we succeed only in so 
far as our will is in harmony with the divine 
will. 


“Got any rivers they say are uncrossable? 
Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through? 
We specialize in the wholly impossible 
Doing what nobody ever could do.” 


These were the lines that were written about 
the Panama Canal when people, without faith, 
said that it could not be dug. When you will 
to do a thing and get so far as to take pick and 
shovel and get after it, you will find that the 
obstacle will begin to disappear, and in time 
there will be clear sailing. 

If your will is in harmony with God’s will 
you can overcome any obstacle, remove any 
mountain, dig through any canal, cross any 
Alps, hew through any wall of granite, tackle 
any proposition and come out victorious. If 
God wants a thing done and appoints you to do 
it, nothing can stand in the way of your accom- 
plishing it 1f you do your part. 


“‘“A man went down to Panama, 
Where many a man had died, 


Lhe Meracle of Will on Upper Road 99 


To slit the sliding mountains 
And lift the eternal tide: 

A man stood up in Panama, 

And the mountains stood aside.” ? 


It is the person with the strong will and the 
right cause that accomplishes, and is able to 
overcome the material. Such persons choose 
the Upper Road and hold the key to the secrets 
that enable them to overcome. They have the 
victory within themselves. They forge ahead 
and do not fear. “As the eagle that lives in 
the upper air does not worry as to how it is to 
cross rivers,’ so they are not troubled as to 
how they are going to overcome things here 
below. They proceed as though there were no 
obstacles in their way and they succeed. They 
are able to say with Charlotte P. Gilman, 


“T took my hat, I took my stick, 
My load I settled fair ; 
I approached that awful incubus 
With an absent-minded air, 
And I walked directly through him, 
As if he wasn’t there.” 


* Percy MacKaye. 


100 The Call of the Upper Road 


He isn’t there. He never is, if we do not 
take him too seriously. He has a way of dis- 
solving as we approach. Our greatest obstacles 
are within ourselves and are usually created by 
our own fears and our lack of will power. 

The enemies of John Bunyan shut him up in 
Bedford jail thinking they could keep him 
within bounds. They did not know what was 
within the man whom they imprisoned. To 
John Bunyan, prison walls were no obstacle. 
He was greater than prison walls. His prison 
cell became to him a place of quiet where he 
had time to himself in which to think and write. 
Instead of his influence being limited it was 
extended to all time and to all people by his 
writing one of the greatest allegories in all his- 
tory. His seeming hindrance became his 
greatest opportunity. 


“My prison walls cannot control 
The flight and freedom of my soul.” 


Fannie Crosby became blind when she was 
six months old. Her darkness was greater 
than prison, but that did not hinder Fannie 
Crosby from doing a great service in life. It 
did not stop her from becoming a power for 





Lhe Miracle of Will on Upper Road 101 


good and sending out a helpful message for all 
time. The real Fanny Crosby was inside. She 
was an Upper Road traveler with a soul and a 
will. She hewed through her walls of granite 
and she scaled her Alps. She was bigger than 
any affliction that came to her. When very 
young she began to exercise her will power. 
At eight years of age she wrote: 


“O what a happy soul am [! 
Although I cannot see, 
I am resolved that in this world 
Contented I will be; 
How many blessings I enjoy 
That other people don’t! 
To weep and sigh because I’m blind, 
I cannot and I won’t.” 


Fannie Crosby became one of the greatest 
of hymn writers, and she has passed on three 
thousand hymns that are being sung through 
the ages, giving joy and comfort to all who sing 
them. Who have not felt the thrill of joy in 
the words of one of her hymns as they sang: 


“Blessed assurance Jesus is mine, 
O what a foretaste of glory divine! 


102 The Call of the Upper Road 


Heir of salvation, purchase of God; 
Born of His spirit, washed in His blood. 


This is my story, this is my song; 
Praising my Saviour all the day long.” 


If John Bunyan in prison could pass on to 
others his wonderful message in Pilgrim Prog- 
ress, and if Fannie Crosby in her blindness 
could pass on three thousand hymns, what can 
you with all your present day advantages, and 
all your faculties, pass on to others during your 
lifetime? 


“There is no thing that you cannot overcome; 
Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, 
Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life 
forlorn. 


Back of thy parents and thy grandparents 
Lies the Great Eternal Will: That too is thine 
Inheritance; strong, beautiful, divine, 

Sure lever of success for one who tries. 


Earth hath no claim the soul cannot attest; 
Know thyself part of the Eternal Source; 
Naught can stand before thy spirit’s force; 
The soul’s divine Inheritance is best.” 


The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 102 


Some one said, “God struck Milton blind that 
he might write his greatest masterpiece.” 

Parcel, the great mathematician and novelist, 
we are told, turned his ill health into a means 
of spiritual perfection. God knows and sends 
or permits what is best. We, with our limited 
vision, do not always see this, but in the end we 
may be able to say with Tennyson: 


“T have lived; seen God’s hand through a life- 
time, 
And all was for the best.” 


Our seeming obstacles and our troubles are 
only blessings in disguise. Some people get the 
foolish notion that God is not with them when 
things go against them. God wants us to be 
greater than things. Unless we are, we fail. 
“All things work together for good to them 
that love God, to them who are called according 
to His purpose.” 


“T learn as the years roll onward 
And leave the past behind, 
That much I had counted sorrow 
But proves that our God is kind; 


104. The Call of the Upper Road 


That many a flower I longed for 
Had a hidden thorn of pain; 
And many a ragged by-path 
Led to fields of ripened grain.” 


William Ernest Henley, we are told, saw all 
his cherished plans go down in defeat because 
of a bodily disease. His power of will was 
wonderful. He never complained but ever 
arose above his sufferings. He writes: 


“Tn the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud, 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody but unbowed. 
ramen ie hate ss HE Fe 
It matters not how straight the gate, 
How charged with punishment the scroll; 
I am the Master of my fate; 
I am the Captain of my soul.” 


Harriet Beecher Stowe said, ‘“‘Nobody’s case 
is desperate whose will is not at fault. When 
I hear people say that circumstances are against 
them, I always retort “Your will is not with 
you.’ I believe in the will. I have faith in it.” 

Louise M. Alcott seemingly had reason to 





The Miracle of Will on Upper Road 105 


believe that circumstances were against her. 
Her family was heavily in debt. She, herself, 
was subject to very severe headaches and she 
lived a rather obscure life. When a child she 
went out one day and sat on the hub of an old 
ox cart and there made up her mind that she 
was going to amount to something in life. She 
made the following resolution: 

“T will do something by and by. Ill sew, 
act, write, do anything to help the family, and 
I’ll be rich, famous and happy before I die: see 
if I don’t.” 

When she first thought of becoming a writer, 
her father handed her a manuscript that had 
been rejected by James F. Field, editor of the 
Atlantic Monthly, with the message: “Tell 
Louise to stick to her teaching. She can never 
succeed as a writer.” Louise said to her 
father: “Tell him I will succeed as a writer, 
and some day I shall write for the Atlantic 
Monthly.” Later on she wrote in her diary, 
“Twenty years ago I resolved to make the 
family independent if I could. At forty that 
is done. My debts are all paid, even the out- 
lawed ones, and we have enough to be com- 
fortable.” . This is what happens when we 


106 The Call of the Upper Road 


“Wake the strong divinity of soul that con- 
quers chance and fate.” 

Harriet Beecher Stowe was busy at work in 
her kitchen one morning when she received a 
letter from her sister in which she said, ‘““Now 
Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would 
write something that would make the whole 
nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” 
Her best self within her responded and she 
said, “I will write something. I will if I live.” 
The fact that she was busy with her household 
duties and her outside interests did not matter. 
She went on the principle that “if a thing 
ought to be done it can be done.’”’ She believed 
that “where there’s a will there’s a way.’ She 
thought while she worked and wrote down 
ideas as they came to her, and strange to say, 
the faster ideas came the lighter seemed her 
work. The more she gave expression to her 
thoughts, the more thoughts she had to give. 
The result was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ a book 
tingling with the idea of human rights; a book 
that was instrumental in doing the very thing 
that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sister said it 
would. 

We find all through history that the men 


Lhe Miracle of Will on Upper Road 107 


and women who accomplished the most were 
not those who had the best of everything, who 
held the highest positions, who had the largest 
bank accounts, who had the greatest advan- 
tages and opportunities, but they whose wills 
were in harmony with God and His will. They 
were those who daily overcame, and who un- 
selfishly gave of their best thought and effort. 
They were those who “fought a good fight and 
came out more than conquerors through Him 
that loved them.” 

Whether it be your lot to find many difficul- 
ties and much to overcome on the road, or 
whether you find many pleasant paths and joys, 
you will be successful only as you will to aspire 
to the highest thinking and acting and the 
passing on of the best you have to others. You 
must be persistent in so living that the Spirit 
may abide within you and work through you. 
God can work in you only as you yield willingly 
to the divine promptings within you. These 
inner promptings have to do with all the details 
of your life. The Spirit within you helps you 
to do away with everything in your life that 
hinders you from doing the will of God. 

When you surrender your will to God and 


108 The Call of the Upper Road 


His Holy Spirit takes possession of you, some- 
thing eternally worth while happens. By His 
grace you enter into a new life and you become 
a member of God’s family. “I will put my 
Spirit in you and ye shall become my sons and 
daughters saith the Lord of Hosts.” You are 
born into the spiritual kingdom. 

Being born of the Spirit is called the Second 
Birth. It differs from your first birth, for 
when you came into this world you had nothing 
to say about it. You had nothing to do with 
your coming here. You had no choice. You 
knew nothing about it until you were here for 
some time. 

Not so with the Second Birth. You must 
choose to be born again. The Second Birth is 
not thrust upon you against your will or with- 
out your knowledge. It is a life granted to 
those who want it and who will to abide in it. 
It is a gift from God. Being born of the Spirit 
is something that you cannot explain. The 
Spirit dwells in you and prompts you and uses 
you. It takes possession of you. It is so real, 
so powerful, so vital and yet so elusive that it 
is beyond explanation. 

One time Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, 


The Miracle of Well on Upper Road 109 


came to Jesus by night, and during the con- 
versation he asked Jesus what it meant to be 
born again. The Master replied by way of 
illustration: “The wind bloweth where it list- 
eth; thou hearest the sound thereof but thou 
canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it 
goeth—so is everyone that is born of the 
Spirit.” 

You can tell something of the workings of 
the Spirit by the way you overcome temptation, 
by the way you daily live, by the influence you 
exert. You live in newness of life. You have 
new desires, new impulses, new visions, and an 
appreciation of the things that are eternal. 

The Master in speaking to the woman at the 
well made clear the results that come from 
being born again, when He said: “He that 
drinketh of the water that I shall give shall 
never thirst, for the water that | shall give him 
shall be in him a well of water springing up 
unto eternal life.” And thus spake He of the 
Spirit which He promised to all those that 
believe in His name. 

You may know you have His Spirit dwelling 
in you if you have constantly springing up 
within you good desires, bits of prayer, psalms 


110 The Call of. the Upper Road 


and hymns, and spiritual songs, thoughts that 
lead to kind deeds, and the surrender of your 
will to Him. 


“Our wills are ours, we know not how 
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.” 


It takes will power to live the life of the 
Spirit. It takes will power to keep out sinful 
thoughts, motives and practices. It takes will 
power to keep ourselves supplied with best 
thoughts and desires By the help of the in- 
dwelling Spirit it can be done. Paul says, “The 
law of the spirit of life hath made me free from 
the law of sin and death.” 

S. M. Shoemaker, Jr., says: “It takes will 
power to accept a life principle as exacting as 
that of the Gospel and to make its truths an 
experience instead of an intellectual conviction 
of which we approve, or with which we are in 
sympathy”. ... “It takes will power to stay 
clear of the things in your life that you ought 
not to indulge in and to constantly be ready and 
able to replace them with what is right.” 

It takes will power to change your course in 
life and to turn about face, but with God’s help 
it can be done. 


The Meracle of Will on Upper Road 111 


This change in the direction of your life is 
called Conversion. William James speaking of 
conversion says: “It is the process, gradual or 
sudden, by which a self, hitherto divided and 
consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, be- 
comes unified, consciously right, superior and 
happy.” Harold Bibgie tells us: “Conversion is 
the only means by which a radically bad person 
can be changed to a radically good person.” 

Shoemaker says: “Surrender of the whole 
self to God means the deliberate dedication by 
deliberate act of will of one’s entire personality 
to doing the will of God so far as we can dis- 
Cover in 

You cannot make yourself spiritual, how- 
ever, by act of will. “By grace are ye saved 
and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. 
Not of works lest any man should boast.” 


“Go deeper. Let Christ come behind the doors 
And change thy nature, have thine innermost 
heart, 
And then with all His consummate art, 
Remake thyself! and lo! these lesser things 
Shall flow as gracious rivers from pure 
springs.” 


112 The Call of the Upper Road 


‘Tis the men and women who surrendered 
their wills to God that have accomplished worth- 
while things in life, that transformed deserts 
into gardens, that replaced ignorance with 
knowledge, that changed false values to true. 
It was a surrendered will that changed Paul of 
Tarsus, a persecutor of the Christians, to be- 
come one of the most ardent and faithful 
followers of the Christ. 

Henry Ward Beecher, in speaking of Paul’s 
conversion, said: “‘He was a man of immense 
conscience, immense pride, and immense com- 
bativeness. He was converted. His conscience 
did not diminish, his pride did not shrink, his 
combativeness did not flow out. All those 
great elements remained in him. Before he 
was converted, his conscience worked with 
malign feelings. Afterwards his conscience 
worked with benevolent feelings. Before he 
was converted, his pride worked for selfishness. 
After he was converted his pride worked for 
benevolence. Before he was converted, his 
combativeness worked for cruelty. After he 
was converted it worked for zeal.” 

It was a surrendered will that made a man 


The Moracle of W2ll on Upper Road 1123 


out of Jerry MacAuley and changed him from 
a drunkard and a debauch to become a great 
missionary in the slums of the city, and led him 
to establish the first Rescue Mission for the 
“Down and Outs.” His continued surren- 
dered will and the Spirit within him freed him 
from the “blinding paralyzing power of sin.” 
He knew from experience the meaning of the 
hymn: 


“Vield not to temptation for yielding is sin, 
Each victory will help you some other to win; 
Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue ; 
Look ever to Jesus, He will carry you 

through.” 


Surrender of will does not mean freedom 
from conflict. It does not mean less of the 
exercise of one’s will. It means the same will 
power acting along a higher plane. It calls at 
times for all the exercise of will that we possess, 
but with the will linked up with God there 
cometh the victory. 


“Vet one there is can curb myself, 
Can roll the strangling load from me, 
Break off the yoke and set me free.” 


114 The Call of the Upper Road 


“So came a Power to set up again all the 
standards that were destroyed. . .. The 
change sweeps through the whole life. Ideals 
and ideas are all rearranged; the course of 
thought is depleted to wholesome things and 
right conduct becomes a matter of prime inter- 
est... . Such overturnings are miraculous 
achievements.” 

Samuel Hadley, a persistent liar and drunk- 
ard, a forger and a thief, became converted 
through the influence of Jerry MacCauley. By 
the grace of God we are told that he became a 
changed man and in a period measured in 
weeks he had broken with every false habit of 
his life. He fully surrendered his will to God. 


“Tt is will alone that matters, 
Will alone that makes or breaks, 
Will that no distraction shatters 
And that no resistance shakes.” 


Conversion is very simple. Our experiences 
differ and our interpretation of conversion may 
vary. Harry Emerson Fosdick in “Christianity 
and Progress” says: “Ask Peter what it is and, 
as he looks back upon his benighted condition, 
he cries that it is like coming out of darkness 


The Meracle of Well on Upper Road 115 


into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is 
and, with his love of superlative figures, he 
cries that it is like being dead and being raised 
again with a great resurrection. Ask John 
what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says 
that it is being born again.” 

The surrender of your will to God is the 
greatest act in life. ‘To know the will of God 
is the greatest knowledge; to suffer the will of 
God is the greatest heroism; to do the will of 
God is the greatest achievement.”’ 

There is at this time and in this place no act 
of will of greater importance than your making 
the following prayer your own: 


“Laid on Thine altar, O my Lord divine, 
Accept this day my gift for Jesus’ sake. 
I have no jewels to adorn Thy shrine, 
Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make; 
But here I bring within my trembling hand 
This will of mine: a thing that seemeth small; 
And only Thou, dear Lord, canst understand 
That when I yield, Thee this, I yield Thee all. 
It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with 

sighs, 

Clenched in my clasp, till beauty it hath none. 


116 The Call of the Upper Road 


Now from Thy footstool, where it vanquished 
lies, 

The prayer ascendeth: “Let Thy will be done.’ 

Take it O Father, e’er my courage fail, 

And blend it so with Thine own will, that e’en 

If in some desperate hour my cry prevail, 

And Thou giv’st back my gift, it may have 
been 

So changed, so purified, so fair have grown, 

So one with Thee, so filled with peace divine, 

I may not know, nor feel it as my own, 

But gaining back my will may find it Thine 


1"? 


CHAPTER 5: The Upper Road Means 
Climbing 


“Does the road wind up hill all the way? 
Yes, to the very end. 
Will the day’s journey take the whole long 
day? 
From morn to night, my friend.” 


CHAPTER 5 
The Upper Road Means Climbing 


“My road through life is rough at times, 
With hills that dip and rise, 
But this all helps my character— 


It needs the exercise.”’ 
—R, McCann. 


The Upper Road calls forth daily the best 
there is in you. It is not a road of ease. It is 
a road of struggle and of growth and of serv- 
ice. It is a road of action, of constant climb- 
ing, and every day arriving a bit ahead of 
where you were yesterday. Itisa fight against 
everything that tends to keep you down, or that 
leaves you below par. At the same time it is 
a road of great satisfactions, and of power, 
and of accomplishments. It offers you the big- 
gest challenge in life. The greatest thing you 
can aspire to be is a strong red-blooded Upper 
Road traveler. 


As soon as you begin to climb the Upper 
119 


120 The Call of the Upper Road 


Road the possibilities within you begin to stir, 
your soul begins to experience its freedom. 
Growth and strength and new aspirations begin 
within you the very moment you start, and 
increase gradually as you go on. At first you 
will not be conscious of any growth. It is not 
easily detected any more than is the growth of 
the seed when it is first planted in the ground. 
As days and nights go by the change becomes 
noticeable. 

Strength comes with the climbing. Greater 
vision 1s yours as you ascend. Your hearing 
becomes keener. The soul becomes freer. 
Your ideals of life become higher. You see life 
in a new light. You find in life a great beau- 
tiful design, and all the harmonies and beauties 
and unselfish acts of life fit together to make 
perfect the plan of the whole. The disconnec- 
tions and discords of life disappear, and every- 
thing in life becomes significant when you 
climb high enough to see. Every step upward 
is a part of the ultimate purpose. Every right 
idea fits into it. Every dream of the climber 
becomes the realization of some accomplish- 
ment. All things work together toward one 
great end. 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 121 


You will find that they who climbed the 
Upper Road in the past were individuals whose 
daily work and daily dreams and daily resolu- 
tions and daily endeavors were in perfect har- 
mony with the promotion of some definite part 
of the Great Eternal Plan. They kept on 
climbing and halted not because of difficulties 
on the way. They were full of faith and kept 
bending their every energy in the direction of 
the goal they sought. 

Mary Lyon, founder of the first college for 
women, was one of these. When a girl in 
school, her seatmate asked her, “How is it that 
the harder a thing is the more you seem to like 
it, Mary?” Mary Lyon replied, “Oh, it’s lots 
more fun climbing than just going along on the 
level—you feel so much more alive. [Il tell 
you what to do when things seem hard like a 
steep hill. Just say to yourself, “Some people 
may call you Difficulty, old hill, but I know that 
your name is Opportunity. You're here just to 
prove that I can do something worth while.’ 
There is real joy in climbing; besides the sun 
stays longer on the summit, and beyond the 
hilltops is a larger, brighter world.” 

All through her life we find Mary Lyon 


122 The Call of the Upper Road 


climbing and doing worth-while things. One 
day while she was peeling potatoes in her broth- 
er’s kitchen, the idea of a college for women 
came to her. There were no colleges for 
women in her day, and she became possessed 
with the idea that women ought to be educated 
as wellas men. She believed that every woman 
should have the chance to make life the very 
best possible. She thought with Tennyson: 


“The woman's cause is man’s; they rise or sink 
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free.” 


They must grow and work and climb to- 
gether to reach the heights to which they are 
each called. Mary Lyon felt that some one 
ought to champion their cause. Why couldn't 
she? Championing women’s cause in her day 
meant some very difficult climbing. There 
were no well beaten paths of thought in that 
direction. She decided to go ahead and make 
the path. Nothing daunted her. Difficulties 
began to lose their substance as she came in 
contact with them. Her enthusiasm inspired 
faith. She raised the money and became the 
founder of the first college for women. 

This college for women in Mt. Holyoke, 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 1223 


Massachusetts, is part of the present great sys- 
tem of education, the beginning of better oppor- 
tunities for women the world over. The doors 
of many colleges of all kinds are now open to 
women. 

The wonderful and inspiring thought about 
climbing the Upper Road is the fact that no 
matter how big an idea you may have, no mat- 
ter how far your vision may extend, there are 
still higher heights, there are still greater un- 
dreamed of visions and possibilities beyond 
awaiting their time for realization. Every pio- 
neer worker, every sincere climber is paving 
the way for better things to follow; if not in 
their own day, in that of others. 


“What matter I or they? Mine or another’s 
day, 
So the right word be said and life the sweeter 
made.” 


Mary Lyon found her reward in the climb- 
ing, and in the knowledge that she was helping 
bring better things to others. Nothing could 
stop her in her upward climb. Her mother 
once said to a neighbor, “Mary will not give 
up. She just walks the floor and says over and 


124 The Call of. the Upper Road 


over again, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, 
trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass. 
Women must be educated—they must be.’ ” 
This little incident in Mary Lyon’s life lets 
us into the secret of her accomplishments. Her 
work was a part of God’s great plan and is 
bound to grow to more and more. What edu- 
cated men and women, who are in harmony 
with God, are going to dream and accomplish 
together in this old world, will surpass anything 
that has ever been in its history. So far they 
have made only a small beginning in their climb 
together. When men and women are free and 
rise together all over the world, it will be worth 
while living just to see what will happen next. 


“We are living, we are dwelling, 
In a grand and awful time, 
In an age on ages telling— 
To be living is sublime.” 


Alice Freeman Palmer lived in the days when 
the majority of people did not consider it at all 
important that women should go to college. 
Alice was hungry for the best that life had to 
offer. She wanted her mind as well as her body 
and her soul to have more growth and greater 


Lhe Upper Road Means Climbing 125 


freedom, in order that she might give expres- 
sion daily to the best she had within her. 

She told her father one day that she wanted 
to go to college. He was greatly surprised, 
tor she had everything at home that he thought 
her heart could wish, and he replied: “My 
daughter, a little more Latin and mathematics 
won't make you a better home-maker. Why 
should you set your heart on this thing?” 
Alice answering him said, “I must go, Father. 
It is not a sudden notion. I have realized for 
a long time that I cannot live my life, the life 
I have it in me to live, without this training. 
I want to be a teacher, just as you want to be 
a doctor.”’ 

Her father consented and she went to col- 
lege. She later became president of Wellesley 
College, where she touched thousands of young 
lives with her radiant personality and her big 
view of life and inspired them to better living. 
One of the girls said of her, “She had a way 
of making you feel all dipped in sunshine.” 
Another of her students said, “She seemed to 
care for each of us, to find each as interesting 
and worth while as if there were no other per- 
son in the world.” A Wellesley woman said 


126 The Call of the Upper Road 


of her, “She had the life-giving power of a true 
creator, one who can entertain a vision of the 
ideal, and then work patiently bit by bit to carve 
it in the marble real. She built the Wellesley 
we all know and love, making it practical, con- 
structive, fine, generous, human, spiritual.” 

Alice Freeman Palmer’s life was short in 
years but long in influence. While she lived 
here she was ever climbing, every day choosing 
the best, every day thinking the best, and every 
day giving of her best. Her influence con- 
tinues long after she has gone. 


“Out of sight sinks the stone in the deep sea of 
time, 
But the circle sweeps on, till the low rippled 
murmurs along the shore run 
And the dark and dead waters leap glad in 
thesis: 


The Upper Road means climbing, striving, 
reaching up to the light, to our becoming some- 
thing higher and better. It is going on from 
where we are to something better beyond. 
There 1s no standing still on the Upper Road. 
A. S. M. Hutchinson says, “Life’s got one. 
We're in the thing. You can’t go back one 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 127 


single second. What you’ve done you’ve done. 
It may take only a minute in the doing, or in the 
saying, but it’s done, or said, for all your life, 
perhaps for the whole of some one else’s life as 
well. There’s just one way we can get life and 
that’s by thinking forward before we do a 
thing; by remembering that it’s going to be for 
always.” 

When we are through climbing here there 
will be still greater heights for us to climb, ever 
climbing to something better beyond; the soul 
reaching out for greater glories and for richer 
experiences. It is great to be on the Upper 
Road where, in time, the soul will be free and 
all our hungers and our longings satisfied. 


“T do not know beneath what sky 
Nor on what seas shall be my fate; 
I only know it shall be high, 

I only know it shall be great.” 


You can start climbing the heights now. 
The heights always start from where you are. 
All you need do is step up. Whether you climb 
or not depends on your own inner desires, your 
quality of thought, and your will. 


128 The Call of the Upper Road 


If you climb the heights, you and your soul 
can make any place great. Whether you are in 
the school room or in business or in the home, 
you may climb and be at your best wherever 
you are. Lydia Marie Childe said, “There is 
no power on earth can prevent my soul from 
holding converse with the angels, even though 
with my hands I feed the pigs.” 

It isn’t what you do with your hands that 
makes you. It is what you do with your 
thoughts. When you think your best you are 
bound to be and to do your best. The place 
you are in will make no difference to you. A 
woman one time lived in a little shack thirteen 
feet by nine. She kept this shack most clean 
and attractive. She prepared the best meals 
and created the most happy atmosphere for the 
family. She extended her help and her sun- 
shine out into the neighborhood. So popular 
was she in the community because of her help- 
ful life that she was called the “Priestess.” 
When she learned of it she said: 

“TI, a Priestess! Ah I would 
The gift and grace were mine, 
To be the Priestess that I should 
In a house thirteen by nine.” 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 129 


It wasn’t the size of her shack but the size 
of her soul that gave significance to her life. It 
wasn't the little space inside, but what went out 
from it that counted so tremendously. 

Frances E. Willard, when a little girl, moved 
with her family from Oberlin, Ohio, where she 
often played on the College Campus, to a farm 
in Wisconsin. The new home was very quiet 
and far away from everything and everybody, 
but Frances decided to make the best of it. In 
her early diary we find the following resolu- 
tion: “I shall spend my coming years in being 
somebody and in doing something for some- 
ody.” She did a great deal of thinking all 
to herself when she was alone on the farm. 
Her thinking was of a high order. She be- 
lieved that one could grow mentally and spir- 
itually wherever one were. She believed that 
growth and wisdom and vision and high re- 
solve had to start from within and work out. 
Anything that is really alive and acting and 
growing within is bound to get out. 

Frances Willard’s early resolution “to be 
somebody” led her to “doing something for 
somebody.” It did not matter to her whether 
she was on the college campus at Oberlin or 


130 The Call of the Upper Road 


away out on the prairies of Wisconsin: what 
mattered was herself and not the place. She 
said to her sister one day, “If we do live inland, 
we do not have to think inland. What’s the use 
of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing be- 
Cause we've never seen the ocean? Let’s take 
this hen coop and go a-sailing. Who knows 
what magic shores we'll touch beyond our sea 
of Fancy?” On her eighteenth birthday she 
wrote: 


“The clock has struck! 
Oh! Heaven and earth, I am free, 
And here, beneath the watching stars, I feel 
New inspiration breathing from afar, 
And resting on my spirit as it ne’er 
Could rest before, comes joy profound, 
And now I feel that I’m alone and free 
To worship and obey Jehovah only.” 


She kept on climbing in thought and ideas 
and service for others. Like Lady Henry Som- 
erset she became known internationally because 
of her work. Asa recognition of what she had 
done for the cause of temperance her statue 
stands today at the National Capitol. 

We cannot stay where we are in thought and 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 131 


ideas and quality of service and do much climb- 
ing. It is much easier to stay where we are 
comfortable than it is to get out and hustle. 
The things about us are very enticing and make 
us loath to leave them. 


“The little Road says—Go, 

The little House says—Stay, 
And oh it’s bonnie here at home, 
But I must go away.” 


Alice Freeman heard the call of the Little 
Road and went away to teach. Frances Wil- 
lard heard the call of the Road and went away 
to sacrifice for the cause of temperance. The 
little Road leads out from a life of ease to a 
life of responsibility and service for others. 

It does not always mean that you have to go 
away from home to take the Little Road that 
says GO, but it is necessary to get out of one’s 
little self that says—Stay where you are. In- 
stead of listening to the Little Road that says— 
Go, get out of yourself! Go on into a better 
life! Go on to do better service! Go on to 
catch the world vision that the Master wants 
you to have when He says, “Go ye into all the 
world and preach the gospel.” Go, by giving 


132 The Call of the Upper Road 


of your means so others can go, if you cannot. 
You can do your part of the going wherever 
you are. The world is divided into communi- 
ties, so all have a chance to go and have a part 
in the world’s work. They may preach the gos- 
pel of the better life wherever they are. 

It is a kindness to be stirred out of our places 
of ease, places where we are not urged to exert 
ourselves, out to a life of struggle and earnest 
thinking, out where things may not be to our 
liking and our choosing, out where we have to 
hustle that we may get sometime where our 
highest and best desires call us, to places ahead 
for which the present struggle fits us. 

It takes much time and great patience to 
make this journey of life. There is no sudden 
ascent. The whole march is gradual. We go 
step by step and day by day. We cannot skip 
the steps or the days. As we journey it seems 
to us that our progress is very slow, but every 
step leads higher, and some day we shall look 
back over the long trail over which we traveled 
with more or less difficulty, and we shall be 
glad we came by way of the Upper Road. We 
may say with Arthur Guiterman in his poem 
ONT GEMS: 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 133 


“So let me hold my way, 
By nothing daunted, 
Until at close of day 
I stand, exalted. 


High on my hill of dreams, 
Dear hills that know me! 
And then, how fair will seem 
The lands below me. 


How pure at vesper time, 
The far hills climbing! 
God give me hills to climb, 
And strength for climbing.” 


The hills of life up which we climb are all 
within ourselves. Every good thought is a 
forward step and is registered on the soul. 
Our inner victories extend our spiritual bound- 
aries and enlarge our soul’s vision. We get 
away from our little selves into the larger life 
that is unbounded and eternal. The steps and 
struggles of every day are a part of this large 
life, and they lead us on to the summit. In the 
words of J. G. Holland: 

“Heaven is not reached by a single bound, 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 


134 The Call of the Upper Road 


And we climb to its summit round by round. 
We rise by the things that are under our feet, 
By what we have mastered of good or gain, 
By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 

And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.” 


The choice of either staying where we are 
or going on to something better is all within 
ourselves. A young man one time in early his- 
tory had a chance to Stay or Go. The place 
he was in said STAY, and offered him money, 
luxury, high positions of honor, and with these 
a life of ease, of indulgence, of pleasure seek- 
ing, and no climbing. The other road said Go, 
and offered him great responsibilities, hard- 
ships, sufferings, service for others, and lead- 
ership on the Upper Road. His first inclina- 
tion was to remain where he was content. His 
better self, his great inner self gained the mas- 
tery and he (Moses) chose “rather to suffer 
affliction with the people of God than to enjoy 
the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the 
reproach of Christ of greater riches than the 
treasures in Egypt.” Had this young man 
Moses failed to accept the call of the Upper 
Road, what a tragic loss it would have been. 


Lhe Upper Road Means Climbing 135 


Not only would he himself miss the abundant 
life, but all the people with whom he came in 
contact would be deprived of his inspiration 
and his leadership. He and they might never 
have known of the pillar of fire and the smiting 
of the sea and the wondrous assurance of God’s 
presence as they journeyed together over the 
Little Road that led on to the Promised Land. 


“Had Moses failed to go, had God 
Granted his prayer, there would have been 
For him no leadership to win; 
No pillared fire, no magic rod, 
No wonders in the land of Zin; 
No smiting of the sea, no tears 
Ecstatic shed on Sinai’s steep, 
No Nebo with his God to keep 
His burial, only forty years 
Of desert watching with his sheep.” 


Forty years going along on the level, forty 
years of desert wandering, forty years of no 
climbing; a life spent in doing ordinary things 
in an ordinary way, choosing the way of least 
exertion, of least resistance, of least responsi- 
bility, of least service, of least growth, of least 
power, and in the end least satisfaction. 


136 The Call of the Upper Road 


No hills to climb, no wide horizons, no large 
vistas, no inspiring outlook, no losing of self 
in the big things of life, but simply going along 
“desert watching” the sheep for forty years, 
and never extending the fences, nor enriching 
the pasture, nor opening of the gates to greater 
adventures—such a life would that of Moses 
have been had he not early in youth followed 
the advice of the Little Road that said—-GO! 


“The climbing road leads up to God, 
The easier way leads down to death 
And ruin and decay.” 


Like Moses of old, you too may hear the call 
of the Upper Road and climb some mountain 
top. You may hear God speak to you. Your 
countenance may be changed. You may go out 
among your friends and associates and become 
a leader in promoting highest ideals and stand- 
ards and quality of service. You may climb 
some Sinai and catch the great vision of life, 
and become a leader of the best. 


“The common road, the trivial task, 
Will furnish all we need to ask,— 
Room to deny ourselves, a road 
That leads us daily nearer God.” 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 137 


We need not go far to come in contact with 
mountains in life that call for climbing. We 
sometimes come in contact with people who 
make life difficult. They make us fight hard 
within ourselves to keep at our best. 


“Daily with souls that cringe and plot 
We Sinais climb and know it not.” 


“The object of life is not to find a pleasant 
road but to reach a worthy goal, whatever the 
road.” Goethe in “Wilhelm Meister” tells us: 


“Life is no resting but a moving; 
Let thy life be deed on deed.” 


On the Upper Road we are always living a 
life of eternal progress. The struggles and 
victories of every day lead us on to possessions 
that are unbounded. Our progress here is so 
eradual that the distance we travel each day 
seems imperceptible. Nevertheless the forward 
steps of each day count tremendously in the 
end. Mary Carolyn Davies tells how the little 
deeds of every day furnish strength for great 
occasions when they arrive: 


“Every great deed has a stairway leading to it, 
Every stair’s a little deed. 


138 The Call of the Upper Road 


Every great deed has a stairway leading to it; 
All who would climb there need 

The patience to do small deeds every day. 
There is no other way. 


Every great deed has a stairway leading to it, 
I mount up one by one; 

I long to reach the top where there awaits me 
The great deed to be done, 

One at atime! O, one at a time 

Is such a tiresome way to climb! 


Every great deed has a stairway leading to it; 
Small trials, slight tests, but then, 

These little victories will lead my footsteps 
To a great deed some day, 

And I must go, as one who still prepares, 
Quietly up the stairs.” 


It is your grand privilege every day of your 
life to climb the heights, surmount the rocky 
steeps, master the difficult; to lead out, to be 
informed, to contribute, to grow, to achieve, to 
assume responsibility, and thus instead of go- 
ing along on the level all your days you may 
climb Sinai, you may become a leader and help 
others to climb the heights. 


The Upper Road Means Climbing 139 


The story is told of a guide in the Alps who 
spent his life helping travelers find the path up 
the mountains. A stone now stands and marks 
his grave at Chamounix, with this inscription, 
“He Died Climbing.” 

That is the way Abraham Lincoln, while 
showing others the path to freedom, died— 
Climbing. That is the way that David Living- 
stone, while showing the dark continent of 
Africa the way to the Light, died—Climbing. 
These and many more all through history 
died—Climbing. Let us follow their example, 


“Fearing not to build our eyrie in the heights 
Where golden splendors play.” 


This Upper Road of life is worth all the 
struggle upward. It is in the end the only sat- 
isfactory road. 


“Tt’s a rough road and a steep road, 
And it stretches broad and far, 
But it leads at last to a Golden Town 
Where Golden Houses are.” * 


* Joyce Kilmer. 








CHAPTER 6: Your Day and Your 
Opportunity on the Road 


“It shall be better that I lived.” 
FRANCES E. WILLARD. 


“Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn— 
Look to this day for it is Life, 
The very LiteotiLite.? 


CHAPTER 6 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 
On the Road 


“Come, my soul, thou must be waking! 
Now is breaking o’er the earth another day; 
Come to Him who made this splendor, 
See thou render 
All thy feeble strength can pay.” 
—CANITZ. 


You are living in the greatest time that has 
ever been since the world began. All that has 
been in the past has contributed more or less 
to this day in which you live. Others have 
labored and you have entered into their labors. 
Yours is a rich inheritance because you are 
heir of all of the past. It is a wonderful priv- 
ilege to be born into the world at such a time 
as this. Great things are happening, and many 
more yet unrivaled are on the way. Things 


that were considered impossible a century ago 
143 


144 The Call of the Upper Road 


are realities today. So common have they be- 
come that we accept them as a matter of fact. 
We found them here without any effort on 
our part and we simply go ahead and make use 
of them. 

We have seen so much that we are not sur- 
prised at anything that happens these days. 
We accept anything new as though we expected 
it. We believe in the seemingly impossible. 
F. W. Boreman in “The Passing of the Impos- 
sible” says: “Leander would have considered 
it impossible to have crossed the Hellespont in 
an aeroplane. But it wasn’t. He didn’t know 
how to do it. That was all.” If we do not 
know how to accomplish impossible things our- 
selves we are not at all surprised when someone 
else does accomplish them. We have reached 
the place where we say no longer that because a 
thing has not been, it doesn’t exist. Radio, for 
instance, has been since the beginning, but not 
until the proper time came for its discovery and 
our ability to make proper use of it, was it re- 
vealed to us. 

The discoveries and inventions and knowl- 
edge of all kinds are here today for some great 
purpose. They have been a part of God’s 


Yvur Day and Your Opportunity 145 


great plan from the beginning. They are a 
part of the “eternal progress moving on.” 

God has many more things for us to discover. 
He has many secrets that He will make ours 
as soon as we are ready to discover them and 
use them. We go from where we are in the 
course of things to something better. We use 
what we have in the search for something 
more. 

Wondrous things have been prepared for 
the next forward step in the march of events. 
We have instantaneous means of communica- 
tion, swift modes of travel, enormous resources 
and wealth, the improved printing press, libra- 
ries, schools, colleges, hospitals, and churches. 
We have organizations without number. We 
have wheels within wheels. Knowledge has 
greatly increased. We have much time for 
running to and fro on the earth. We jostle 
each other on the streets. We have unrivaled 
opportunities for helping one another. We 
have much freedom and much leisure in our 
day, but with all we have there is unrest. All 
these gifts that are ours today do not of them- 
selves satisfy. Satisfaction comes as a result 
of our own contribution to the life of today, of 


146 The Call of the Upper Road 


the things that are worth while, the things that 
are worth passing on to others, the things that 
are eternal. It is the Spirit working by and 
through us in the use of the gifts of our day 
that gives them significance. 

We shall make progress in our day only as 
the Spirit of the Master of Life abides in and 
works through each one of us. “A man’s life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth.”” A man’s life consists of 
his spirit, his quality of service and his life 
purpose. 

We are to seek money not for mere money’s 
sake, but for the good we can pass on with it 
in our day; we are to seek higher positions and 
be worthy of them not for selfish ends but that 
we may have greater opportunities for useful- 
ness. We should be interested in politics not 
for our own selfish ambitions but to help make 
politics cleaner and purer and effective and 
righteous in our day. We should not be in so- 
ciety just to have a so-called good time and to 
fritter away our precious day, but that in all 
our social contacts we may help bring into it 
the spirit and the vision and the helpful dig- 
nity of the Master. 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 147 


“What really matters in any epoch is the 
question, Has the Soul moved? Has it gained 
any first step in its development? That is the 
count that will decide all other events. Your 
creeds, your congresses are straws in the 
wind.” It is only as we work in harmony with 
God that we make progress.” 

“Except the Lord build the house they labor 
in vain that build it.” 

“There is a divine plan in human affairs. It 
is not the order that exists but that ought to 
exist. God knows it and wills it. It is for man 
to discover and achieve it.” 


“Life is much if God is in it, 
Man’s busiest day’s not worth God’s minute; 
Much is little everywhere 
If God the labor does not share. 
So work with God and nothing’s lost, 
Who works with Him does best and most.” 


We have made great progress in things ma- 
terial in the past because we have bent our 
every energy in that direction. We could make 
progress undreamed of as yet if we bent our 
every energy in the direction of the spiritual. 
There is power all about us awaiting release. 


148 The Call of the Upper Road 


There are great secrets of God awaiting our 
readiness. We shall go forward not only 
along one line but along all lines when we work 
in harmony with God and take part in His di- 
vine plan. We shall do greater things than 
have yet been done if we bend our every energy 
in the direction of the Spirit. “The Spirit it- 
self revealeth the deep things of God.” It is 
our wonderful privilege in our day to have 
these deep things revealed to us. 


“For the secrets are all forbidden 
Till God means man to know, 
And this was the thought 
That the silence wrought, 
That we were the men God meant should 
know.” 


We cannot begin to dream where God will 
lead us if we but dedicate our lives to Him 
and do the work He wants done by each of us 
in this day He gives us. We already have un- 
limited opportunity to make use of the secrets 
God has placed at our disposal. It is great to 
be alive today and to have a chance to choose 
and to serve. 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 149 


“It is the hour of man: new purposes, 

Broad shouldered, press against the world’s 
slow gate; 

And voices from the vast eternities 
Still preach the soul’s austere apostolate; 
Always there will be vision of the heart, 
The press of endless passion,—every goal 
A traveler’s tavern, whence he must depart 
On new adventures of the Soul.” 


It is to the new adventures of the Soul that 
you are called in this your day. There are no 
adventures greater. All else falls into insig- 
nificance in comparison in the eternal reckon- 
ing. No one can call you to greater accom- 
plishments than God. It is no tame life to 
which He calls you today. It is no selfish life. 
It is a life to be lived for the good of others. 
It is the life of the Spirit. It is the biggest 
challenge that can come to any individual. It 
calls forth daily the best there is in you. You 
must be awake and aggressive and fearless and 
dynamic if you do your part in this great day 
God has given you. This is a day of great 
temptations and of unprecedented possibilities. 
Marcus Dodd said, “I do not envy those who 


150 The Call of the Upper Road 


have to fight the battles of Christianity in the 
twentieth century.” Then afterwards he 
added, ‘‘Yes, perhaps I do, but it will be a stiff 
fight.” 

As you face your life today then, look upon 
it as a great challenge and no easy task. It is 
something too big and too vital and too eter- 
nally important for you to undertake alone. It 
is only with God’s help that you can make the 
most of this wonderful day that He has given 
you; this great day in which you are free to 
choose and in which you are privileged to make 
your contribution to the whole of life; the day 
in which you are to pass on to others your best, 
as others before you have passed on their best 
to you. These are great days of opportunity. 


“He speaks not well who doth his time deplore, 
Naming it new and little and obscure, 
Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds. 

All times were modern in the time of them, 
And this no more than others. Do thy part 
Here in the living day, as did the great 
Who made old days immortal! So shall men, 
Gazing far back to the far looming hour 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 151 


Say, Then was the time when men were truly 
men: 

Though wars grew less, their spirits met the 
test 

Of new conditions; conquering the civic 
wrong, 

Saving the country’s honor as their own, 

And their own as their country’s and their 
sons’; 

Defying leagued fraud with single truth; 

Not fearing loss, and daring to be pure.” 


All too few have this vision of Richard Wat- 
son Gilder. It is astonishing the number of 
individuals who fail to realize the importance 
of their day, and are not at all concerned re- 
garding the contribution they are making. 
They are indifferent to the part they take in it. 
They do not take seriously this wonderful day 
God gives them in which to live a life that 
counts for themselves, for others, and for Him. 
They do not as much as thank God that He 
gives them life and freedom and wonderful ad- 
vantages in their day. They are ungrateful 
children, accepting all these gifts and not rec- 
ognizing the Giver. They pay no more at- 


152 The Call of the Upper Road 


tention to God than if He were not. They 
positively leave Him out of their plans as 
though He did not matter. They close their 
ears to the call of the Upper Road, and take 
another of their own choosing. 


“Oh the road to Endor is the oldest road 
And the craziest road of all; 
Straight it runs to the old witch’s abode 
As it did in the days of Saul; 
And nothing has changed the sorrow in store 
For such as go down on the road to Endor.”’ 


All life and all world conditions everywhere 
are made clean and pure and wholesome and 
harmonious, beautiful and inspiring in propor- 
tion as each individual in his day helps to make 
them so. In the words of Owen Meredith: 


“No stream from its source flows seaward, 

How lonely soever its course, but that some 
land is gladdened; 

No star ever rose or set without influence 
somewhere. 

Who knows what earth needs from earth’s 
lowest creature? 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 153 


No life can be pure in its purpose and strong 
in its strife, 

And all life not be purer and _ stronger 
thereby.” 


Each individual is as much one as any other 
individual. Each one may add in some way 
to the contribution of the whole. They who 
make the biggest contributions in their day are 
they who are possessed of the Spirit of God 
and are led by Him. 

The spiritual life does not mean a secluded 
life. It does not mean that one has to talk 
about God all the time. There are people who, 
as someone has said, “do not believe there is 
an egg in the pudding unless they see the egg.”’ 

In God’s sight, “Your duties are as much 
a part of your religious life as your devotions.”’ 
“The ordinary vocation becomes a divine mis- 
sion.” ‘The true scholar goes to his desk as to 
an altar.” The whole of life counts with God. 
In the words of George Herbert: 


“Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine.” 


God is not partial to those holding the high- 
est offices. “All service ranks the same with 


154 The Call of the Upper Road 


God.” It is “the spirit in which we act that 
is the highest matter.” In your day’s program 
what matters with Him is not your mottoes and 
your creeds, but your inner life, your daily 
choices, how you play your games, do your 
work, spend your money, use your talents, that 
in everything’ connected with your life you 
may do all for the good of others and for the 
glory of God. 

‘“‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil 
with good,” said the Master of the Upper 
Road. ‘Fill the barrel with wheat, and you 
may defy the devil to fill it with tares.” Na- 
poleon had the same idea when he said, “To re- 
place is to conquer.” The reason there are so 
many undesirable and destructive influences in 
the world today is because each individual did 
not assume sufficient responsibility and become 
sufficiently active in his day in helping to keep 
the evil out by crowding in the good, by being 
on the ground floor first and beating the devil 
to it. He did not realize the importance and 
the power and the far reaching influence of 
his own individual immortal contribution to the 
life of his day. Had more of them seen and 
cared and been ready with the best, we would 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 155 


not have the difficulties we have today in drivy- 
ing out the evils that have gotten into soci- 
ety, into politics, into our homes, into our 
communities, into our standards of living. 
“Nature abhors a vacuum.” ‘Weeds thrive in 
soil where no seed is sown.” “The devil like a 
roaring lion goeth about seeking whom he may 
devour.”’ Are you doing your part in your 
day to keep the evil out? Then 


“Breathe the world thought, do the world deed, 
Think highly of thy brother’s need. 
Give thanks with all thy flaming heart, 
Crave but to have in it a part; 
Give thanks and clasp thy heritage— 
To be alive in such an age.” 


Every good thought you think, every tempta- 
tion you overcome, every good service you ren- 
der helps keep the evil out. Evil is so fluid 
that you have to attend to business constantly 
to keep it out. You must be well reinforced. 
You must keep fit in every way to meet the 
problems and the temptations of your day. 
Never indulge in anything that will leave you 
less than your best. You should be able to give 
to your inner self a satisfactory reason for 


156 The Call of the Upper Road 


everything that you do. You cannot afford to 
do things just because others do them, or be- 
cause you think you are going to be left out of 
society if you do not join with others in the 
doing of that which your innermost soul tells 
you is not best. Be a leader of the best, an in- 
troducer of the good, and not a follower of the 
weak-willed and the indifferent people of your 
day. 
“Right needs you, 

Truth claims you— 

That’s a call indeed 

One must heed.” 


Your reading ought to be such as will 
strengthen your mind, increase your knowl- 
edge, add tonic to your soul, broaden your vi- 
sion, and inspire you to still better living. 
You should read daily the Word through which 
the Master of Life reveals yourself to you and 
makes plain to you His principles and His pur- 
pose of life. 

You should have an intelligent and whenever 
possible an active interest in all the vital prob- 
lems of your day. Consider them as God’s 
affairs and yours. All the business in the 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 157 


world today is God’s business and ours. We 
are called to be workers with Him. He has 
called us to become His ambassadors. 

In every community there is going on in 
every individual you meet a choosing between 
the good and the evil, between the best and the 
not best, between Christ and Barabbas, be- 
tween the Upper Road and the Lower. Many 
choose the things that narrow life, and miss 
the broad outlook and the abundant and the 
fruitful life. “Whatever lowers vitality, les- 
sens life, narrows it, impoverishes it, by what- 
ever name it is called, whatever authority com- 
mands it is anti-Christian. Christ declared His 
mission to develop life, enlarge its sphere, in- 
crease its activities, ennoble its character. 
The life that He came to impart transcends all 
definition.”’ 

The greatest thing you can do for any indi- 
vidual or any group in your day is to help them 
find the best. It takes courage, consecration, 
power of will to do this in your own group, in 
your own home, among your own friends, in 
your own school, in your own place of business, 
where the need may be as great as it is any- 
where. 


158 The Call of the Upper Road 


The place you are in needs you today. That 
is why the Master of Life placed you in it. He 
expects you to represent Him in this place, just 
as much as if He sent you to India or to Africa. 
He divided the world up into little places and 
little groups of friends and folks that each 
might have a part, wherever they were, in help- 
ing Him upbuild His kingdom. 

There is enough to be done everywhere to 
occupy all of everybody’s time. Some may 
work in one way in their day and some in an- 
other. Christ’s plan for the redemption of 
the world deals with every phase of life today. 
There is nothing in life foreign to Him. He 
is concerned with our conduct towards our 
neighbor, with sanitation, economics, agricul- 
ture, commerce, industry, homes, schools, 
churches, society, politics and especially with 
our consideration of little children and young 
people, all of whom are very dear to Him, and 
who are easily influenced by the things we do 
and teach. In His conception of life, “not only 
this and that among the conditions but the to- 
tality of human existence has to be regener- 
atecies 

So close are our contacts, so rapid our means 


Your Day and Your Opportunity 159 


of communication, so intricate is life, that each 
individual influence is very far reaching these 
days. 

As every man with a trowel helps in a great 
building, doing a necessary part; as every 
stroke of the artist helps bring out the beauty 
and the harmony of a great painting, so every 
good thought and every unselfish act, and every 
good we promote helps today in the upbuilding 
of the Master’s Kingdom. 

It is a wonderful privilege to be alive today, 
to know that God gives you life. It is great 
to be able to recognize Him in nature all about 
you; to be permitted and urgently invited to 
hold sweet communion with Him within the 
sanctuary of your own soul; to be given will 
power with which to accept the best; to be 
given strength and grace to climb the Upper 
Road; to be privileged, with His help, to be- 
come the most helpful and the most inspiring 
person possible in this day that He gives you; 
to be able to say in your day, as Frances Wil- 
lard said in hers, “It shall be better that I 
lived”—all because you heard and accepted the 

all of the Upper Road. 
THE END 





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